“The hand is rotten”: a seriously ill girl was sent to a colony instead of a hospital

This was done before the verdict came into force

An 18-year-old girl was sent from women’s pre-trial detention center No. 6 in Moscow to distant Udmurtia. They sent it hastily, before the verdict came into force and against her will. “She is not the first, she is not the last,” the reader will say, and he will be right. But! The girl’s hand is literally drying up, and she faces amputation or, worse, death from sepsis. That is why the capital’s Department of Health agreed on her preliminary treatment and subsequent complex surgery. But instead of all this, Polina is now either shaking somewhere in the “Stolypin” carriage, or sitting in transit.

And this is not demonstrative (the girl has “folk” 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), but ordinary cruelty. It was easy for the jailers to leave her in Moscow; moreover, this is exactly what they promised her mother. But either they were tired, or it was just more convenient for them…

What has become the common practice of transporting sick prisoners before the sentences enter into legal force – in the material of the MK observer.

This story should start with a story about how Polina received a hand injury. Unfortunately, it’s all about drugs. A schoolgirl and her “friends” found the bookmark in May 2022. They divided it. The girl took her share at home, at night. And in the morning, when her mother came to wake her up, she found her unconscious. The girl lay on her bent arm for many hours (this is called “positional compression syndrome”). On the way to the hospital, the doctors told my mother: “Prepare for the worst… spontaneous breathing is not restored.” But Polina survived. 20 days of intensive care, acute renal failure and a hand swollen to terrible sizes. In the end, the arm was saved, but they were cut lengthwise and crosswise (without this, the swelling would not go away – the kidneys did not work).

In general, three teenagers, including Polina, as well as one adult guy (he eventually died from an overdose) ended up in the intensive care unit of the Filatov hospital. There was an uproar, the metropolitan police demanded a serious investigation – how could it be that teenagers in Moscow are poisoned by drugs? A criminal case was opened, and Polina became the accused. Two other teenagers said that it was she who allegedly suggested using it. Perhaps this is so: it was in her underwear that they found a bag of the substance. At first she was charged with storage, and then they added sales.

After two months of treatment, Polina was discharged home for further rehabilitation. And then the court put her under house arrest. While the investigation was ongoing, Polina continued to study at school, albeit remotely. She was allowed to visit the hospital, where electrophoresis and various physiotherapeutic procedures were performed. But this did not correct the situation – the skin on her arm periodically burst and the limb bled, the girl experienced pain. The doctors assigned her the date and place of the operation – November 27, 2023, Yudin Hospital.

And in October there was a verdict. The judge of the Lefortovo court sentenced Polina to 6 years in prison. The mother asked not to take her daughter into custody until the appeal, so that she could have surgery and finish the eleventh grade. But alas, Themis turned out to be deaf.

In pre-trial detention center No. 6, where the girl was brought, her arm became very bad. Local doctors admitted that they could not help.

“I sent a request to the Department of Health,” says Maria Botova, a member of the Moscow Public Monitoring Committee (a doctor by profession). – They sent an answer that they are ready to carry out surgical treatment. A consultation was scheduled. The girl was taken to her from the pre-trial detention center. There they told her – let’s do physical therapy and physical therapy, and then surgery. But in the conditions of a pre-trial detention center there is no such possibility and cannot be. The medical unit of the detention center does not have the right to carry out rehabilitation treatment, and they will not take you to it under escort, since this is not a vital procedure. The system works in such a way that conditions are created in which it is difficult for a prisoner to realize the right to health. Obstacles arise from all sides (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Federal Penitentiary Service, Ministry of Health). And the girl can lose her hand. Why, there is a threat of developing sepsis.

Now her daughter’s left arm cannot straighten, there is no sensation up to the elbow, her fingers don’t work, her hand hangs down, says the mother. – The diagnosis is included in the list of diseases according to Government Decrees No. 3 (preventing detention) and 54 (preventing serving a sentence). The lawyer and daughter (she just turned 18) wrote an application for a medical examination. There was no response within a month, although the Resolution stipulates very strict deadlines. Then they told us that they allegedly did not receive statements from either her or the lawyer. There is no response at all to repeated statements and complaints. The head of the medical and sanitary unit of the Federal Penitentiary Service, to whom I went for an appointment, said that it was planned to have an operation, and then, based on the new diagnosis, to conduct an examination. The Department of Health gave the go-ahead for the operation at the same Yudin hospital in early February. And then I found out that she was taken by convoy from Moscow to Udmurtia! For what? And does the law really allow transportation before the verdict comes into force?

Doesn’t allow it. At the beginning of the past, the Constitutional Court even recognized the right to appeal decisions to transfer prisoners to court. But until the trial and the case, Polina will be in the Izhevsk pre-trial detention center.

Meanwhile, in the hospital. Everyone is waiting for Yudin for Polina. They are ready to shift the date of the operation to the beginning of March. But will the girl be returned to Moscow from distant Udmurtia? Please consider this publication an official appeal to the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia.