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The investigating bodies launched an inquiry yesterday, as soon as they heard about the incident that had happened in a café in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. According to preliminary information, a young woman with disability and her carer came to a café to have a glass of water, but had to leave as they did not get their order. Without any lawful reasons, the director of the café not just asked the unwanted guests to leave, but called the security to do that. Of course, the forces were unequal and the woman and her carer and her mother who had arrived on hearing about the incident, were basically thrown outside the café. I am not speaking here about some human morality, when burly men scare off not just women, but physically challenged people.

In this case I am speaking of the fact that the owner of the café and his faithful guards, guided solely by their greedy motives, grossly violation the law protecting the right of a person, meaning that they committed a crime qualified in the Russian Criminal Code as disparagement which carries a maximum jail term of five years.

In general, similar cases have become more frequent in private facilities, like cafes or shops. As a rule, the central characters in such scandals are private security guards hired by the owners. They don’t make any difference for the elderly people, or children or people with disabilities. Their main and only criterion is the order of the owner. I am sorry for such a figurative comparison, but it reminds service dogs. We still remember the case when a woman, who had survived the Leningrad Siege during the Great Patriotic War, died in Saint-Petersburg when she was detained for alleged stealing of three packs of butter (which was not true), or when children were illegally held in the basement of a shop in Altai Territory and some other loud cases. But in case of a dog, you can’t blame it, an animal stays an animal, and if it becomes dangerous for people, it usually gets killed, it's the owner who is held responsible. But in this case the responsibility has to be laid on both those who set the guards on people and who follow those criminal orders. The punishment for each of them will be determined by investigators and a court of justice I hope.

Someboyd might think that a petty case for the Investigative Committee to be involved in. But it is impunity for such crimes that makes a base for permissiveness and a false idea that the strong one is the right one. This is not so, at least it’s not in a constitutional state. The one is right who has the law on their side. With all the nuances, the Investigative Committee is going to look into by all means, it is clear that nobody has any right to force clients out of a private public place in no circumstances, if those clients do not break the public peace. This is why the Investigative Committee has always responded and will respond with lightning speed to such unlawful actions and take all possible measures to prosecute the guilty ones so that nobody has a slightest idea to act in such a way. This is the case, when inevitability of the punishment is more important than its severity.

Head of Media Relations                                                                                                                               V.I. Markin