A resident of Sochi for a year and a half sought the exhumation of her son’s body: to hear the “last voice”

An exhumation, as one medical examiner put it, is an opportunity to hear the “last voice” of the victim. But resorting to this procedure in Russia has recently become extremely rare. On the one hand, it seems to disturb the remains in a purely Christian way is bad, and there must be very good reasons for this. On the other hand, even when there are such reasons, relatives are often denied.

In Sochi, the exhumation of the body of a man took place the other day, whose death caused a lot of questions from relatives. Why this was difficult to achieve, and what to do with those who could not hear the “last voice” of the victim – in the material of the MK columnist.

A resident of Sochi, a specialist in the installation of plastic windows, 38-year-old Semyon Ganshin left home on July 27, 2021. The mother became worried the next day when her son did not return and stopped answering the phone. On the third day she came to the police station. And there she was told that Semyon committed an offense (what – they did not specify) and that tomorrow the court would choose a preventive measure for him, but in the meantime, you can give him food. The woman ran to the store opposite, bought food, cigarettes, brought it and … they took it all from her.

But after that nothing happened – there was no trial, and the son did not return. On August 4, Irina Ganshina again came to the police: “Where is the son?” “But we didn’t have it!” – unexpectedly answered her. “How was it not? You said yourself that you were detained for an administrative offense.” “Wrong, that is. But we have an unidentified corpse. Suitable according to the signs.

It turned out that the corpse was found by the police officers near the apartment building on August 1. The identity was established by the prints of two fingers: Ganshin had previously been convicted (at the age of 15 he committed theft), and his prints were in the database.

Irina Konstantinovna is almost sure that it was like this: her son was detained, he died in the police department, and the body was simply thrown out into the street.

But there are inconsistencies here. The experts in their opinion wrote that the corpse has serious putrefactive changes and it is impossible to establish the causes. If Semyon died on the evening of the 27th (when he disappeared), then until the moment the body was discovered, he lay for four days at a temperature of about +30 degrees. Then such serious putrefactive changes are explained. But in this case, he could not have been at the police station on July 30, which means that the police really confused him with someone else and mistakenly took a package from his mother (or just joked).

This is the opinion of the investigation, which refused to open a criminal case on the fact of Ganshin’s death. “Signs of violent death were not found,” they wrote in the refusal. The prosecutor’s office of the Central District of the city of Sochi recognized this decision to refuse as legal.

However, the cause of death is not entirely clear. And why then did her son die? And is it him?

“From the very beginning they refused to show me the body of my son,” says Irina Ganshina. – They categorically refused. I already asked my friends, and was ready to pay … They explained the refusal by saying that it was supposedly so spoiled that there was nothing to look at. But let me, can’t I decide for myself whether to watch or not to watch? In addition, he had tattoos on his shoulder, on his back and on two legs. They are unlikely to have disappeared. The son was returned from the morgue in a closed coffin. It was forbidden to open. At the local department of the Investigative Committee, they showed me a photo of the corpse at the place of discovery, but there the person lies with his back up. It is impossible to understand whether this is a son or not.

Irina Konstantinovna came to human rights activists for help. They noticed that the medical examiner set the body length at 189 cm. And Ganshin’s height was 172 cm. In general, there were doubts that this was actually Sergei. Only exhumation could unequivocally answer this. And then it turned out that it is practically impossible to achieve it.

“Only after a personal reception with the chief investigator of Sochi, we were allowed to exhume,” says Roman Veretennikov, a lawyer for the Team Against Torture. – We convinced him that the check was not complete (we didn’t even take tests for poisoning). He agreed that the mother should know the truth: whether this is a son or not.

The procedure itself took place at the end of January. It turned out that this was the first exhumation in Sochi in a long time.

– At 14 o’clock I arrived with my mother and her sister at the Sochi cemetery on Baranovka (it is located on a big mountain). We waited until the investigator and the expert arrived. Diggers dug the grave to the coffin, the rest themselves. The lid was removed. There were church supplies and a costume. And under them is a package in which the body. We incised him, the expert put his hand in there (there is a solid goo) and pulled out the rib, took tissue samples of the internal organs. Surprisingly, he did not experience any emotions, although for the first time he took part in such a thing. Everyone worried about their mother. But she kept her cool.

“I prepared for this procedure,” says the mother. – In general, since the disappearance of my son, I have cried all the tears, I take sedatives all the time. And here I also took special masks with me (so as not to hear the smell of the body), ammonia, Corvalol. You see, they tell me that it is impossible for a mother to survive such a thing. But I answer – it is better to know for sure whether this is your child, and if it is yours, then from what he died.

Almost a year and a half passed from the moment the body was discovered to the exhumation. All this time, I repeat, the mother was knocking on the doorstep. And if she is still allowed, then most people are denied.

“They brought us a body, which they presented as the corpse of my murdered brother,” says Natalya N. “The investigation put pressure on my mother, she agreed that it was him. But I do not believe. You see, my brother had special features. And I did not surprise them with this body (although the corpse was in poor condition). Nobody listened to me. The body was buried.

Natalia wants to achieve exhumation. But she is told that this can only be done by decision of the investigation or the court. The investigation denied her. And there are more and more stories like this.

“The exhumation is carried out on the basis of the investigator’s decision,” explains Andrey Grivtsov, a former investigator for especially important cases of the ICR. “Judgment is only necessary if the relatives object to the exhumation. In this case, the investigator applies to the court with a request to allow the exhumation.

“There are two main problems,” says former prosecutor, now lawyer Alexei Fedyarov. – First: the UK does not like to check in such cases. Here people come and say: “this is not our son/brother/father”. In such situations, you need to initiate a case, interview everyone, and then decide on the exhumation. But the investigators are trying to brush it off. Only a personal reception moves the matter off the ground. When the investigator understands that there will be a fuss, that they will complain about him, he agrees: “Well, to hell with him, let’s exhume him.” The second problem is relatives. Some identify the body, say it’s him, while others say it’s not him. And the investigation here clearly prefers to believe those who identified.

But why? Is the process really that hard?

“A forensic medical expert is involved in the exhumation and examination of the corpse,” says Grivtsov. – The investigator himself, of course, does not dig up anything, this is done by the cemetery workers. The task of the investigator is, with the help of a medical expert, to examine the corpse, record possible bodily injuries, cadaveric phenomena, and then appoint a medical forensic examination. All this is not such a complex investigative actions. Indeed, the organization of the exhumation can take away certain forces at the stage of agreement with the cemetery, the expert, but this is not something for which a conscientious investigator will refuse to conduct an investigative action. On the contrary, it should be interesting for the investigator. Another question is that there should be grounds for exhumation, for example, doubts that a person did not die a natural death, but was killed. An investigator, if he is conscientious, cannot be interested in not working. Besides, his work is interesting.

Oh, and how I would like to say something like “Such words to God’s ears.” Alas, no one keeps statistics on refusals to exhume. There is no data on how many such procedures have been carried out in Russia in recent years. Ganshina, who lost her son, is now waiting for the results of the examinations. Whatever they are, they will bring clarity and at least somehow calm the unfortunate woman.