A Ministry of Internal Affairs cadet from Rostov mysteriously disappeared in Dagestan: parents are ready to pay five million

In Dagestan, a search is underway for 21-year-old Anna Tsomartova, a cadet at the Rostov Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The girl disappeared on February 10th. She came to the republic for a Thai boxing competition with her team. She left the Sports Palace after the fight and… disappeared.

Parents are desperate. We immediately went to the place where our daughter disappeared. They are given a version that the girl… could have committed suicide.

However, there is no body, and the video on the cameras raises serious doubts…

“I believe that absolutely nothing is being done to find out what really happened to my daughter,” Anna’s father Nikolai Tsomartov is indignant. “It seems that the Investigative Committee for the Republic of Dagestan, for some reason, is not able to fully and objectively conduct an investigation into the fact of her disappearance.”

The parents wrote an appeal to Alexander Bastrykin with a request to take this case under his personal control and take it to the central office of the Investigative Committee in Moscow.

The day before, the mother, out of grief and despair, announced a reward of 5 million rubles for information about the whereabouts of her daughter.

The Rostov student did not have a phone with her; the battery was dead, and she left it with her brother, who also came to the competition. Therefore, it was impossible to calculate its geolocation.

Parents joined the investigation. Moreover, Anna’s father also works in the authorities.

The first days the search was active. The search for the athlete included personnel from the Makhachkala and Kaspiysk police departments, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and volunteers. They also searched from helicopters, and divers examined the coastal strip of the Caspian Sea.

I was walking, got lost, climbed over…

A criminal case was opened under Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Murder” – this is a common practice when a person disappears, even if there is no body.

It was possible to establish that that evening Anna, while moving around the city, ended up on the territory of a departmental sanatorium for law enforcement agencies.

“She was walking, there was a beautiful embankment, maybe she got lost. She walked back and forth along the shore, sat on the pier. The cameras are located up to some concrete barriers. She climbed over them, and then she had to walk to the fence. She probably understood that there had to be a way out, and walked forward, and that’s it, then the trail ends,” the girl’s father cannot come to his senses.

Anna’s parents believe that the investigation into the case is clearly being delayed.

“Explanations were taken from three dozen people as if they were carbon copies: no one knows anything, no one saw anything,” the father throws up his hands.

“The materials of the criminal case contain no information that one of the sanatorium’s CCTV cameras was allegedly not working at that time, and the recording from another camera, in my opinion, had an unnaturally dark image. The investigator leading the case guaranteed that the recording would be sent for examination in order to determine possible external influence, but so far this has not been done. Also, recordings from video cameras located at the entrance to the main building of the sanatorium and at two checkpoints were not seized or studied.”

Despite the parents’ requests, the cars leaving the sanatorium that night were not identified.

Lost the fight

The interrogation of the guards who were on duty at the sanatorium that day, in my father’s opinion, was done superficially. “Their possible involvement in the disappearance of my daughter has not been verified in any way,” Nikolai Tsomartov lists possible violations in his address to Bastrykin.

At some point, parents actively began to be told that Anna had probably committed suicide and that it was unlikely that her body would be found. Moreover, she lost the fight that day. You never know, maybe she was upset… They even brought in a psychologist to the case, who puts forward exactly this version as the motive. A local investigator went to Rostov to seize the girl’s computer and talk with her friends about possible suicide. One of the arguments: allegedly Anna, before leaving, asked her brother to tell her mother that she “loved her very much.”

The parents do not believe that their daughter could have done something to herself, and even in another city. In addition, cadets of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are repeatedly tested for mental stability, so it is unlikely that there could be problems in this regard.

“We never believed in suicide, in a possible accident, but this also needs to be clarified. But the investigation at the scene is at a dead end. They are not doing anything concrete,” the father continues.

All media outlets in the republic reported the disappearance of the MIA cadet, and local websites wrote about it. Anyone with any information is asked to contact them about the possible whereabouts of the missing girl.

Of course, the suicide version is the most convenient, and not only in Dagestan.

Kidnapped as brides and into slavery

It is unlikely that anyone will deny that Dagestan has its own special mentality. If something happens, they usually don’t hand over their own people. In addition, polygamy is common, but they cannot do anything about it: this is also openly written about.

I remember how once upon a time I came to Dagestan to write material about how girls are kidnapped in order to marry them off. Not only in Dagestan itself, they are taken away even from neighboring regions, including the Stavropol Territory, and then their parents are presented with a fait accompli.

So, I was warned in advance: not to walk around the city in splendid isolation. Dress as inconspicuously as possible. And indeed, at the local market people came up to me and asked who she was and if I wanted to go with them. It’s good that she waved her journalistic crust.

And much was written about the kidnapping of citizens for the purpose of selling them to brick factories. People were rescued from labor slavery years later. They were looking for them, but everything was useless. In the same way: no one saw or knows anything. Has anything changed since then?

Why? On the contrary, in national republics, adjusted for traditions, all-Russian laws are often understood very conditionally.

It is clear that any nation, as they say, has its own norms and bonds. Someone leads round dances, and someone… steals brides. And why be surprised and indignant that those same law enforcement agencies would rather act with an eye on their own way of life.

“During the investigation into my daughter’s disappearance, blatant violations were committed that make investigative actions pointless,” the father believes.

Now the same Dagestan is presented as a wonderful resort in the Caspian Sea for recreation and tourism. That’s how it is – the nature is gorgeous, the sea too. But what about security?

My student friends recently left and returned the same day. They say they harass you on the streets.

Is this normal? What to do about it? To understand and forgive – well, these are the traditions, nothing can be done? But what about the rule of law, everywhere and always?

Anna can wait for help

Of the hundreds of comments from locals condemning the family who “dares” to look for their daughter, only a few sincerely sympathize with them:

“In this holy month for you, woman, mother, sister, just read what you write. If each of you put yourself in your mother’s place, what would you do? Were you living an ordinary life and waiting for a call from the Ministry of Internal Affairs? Any of us will dig our noses into the ground, any… everyone will be under suspicion, EVERYONE. A child disappeared in a foreign republic. You should be ashamed…”

It is clear that some kind of emergency situation has occurred, otherwise the girl would have shown up long ago. And it is clear that precisely due to the circumstances and the place where all this happened, she may still be waiting for help. And the possible kidnappers hid because of the noise and the threat of criminal prosecution.

And there is only one option to objectively investigate this case – to take him to Moscow.

“That’s all we ask from Alexander Bastrykin. As long as there is a chance that Anna is alive, we will fight,” says Nikolai Tsomartov.