Widow of pensioner from KBR treats compensation awarded by court as fair

The widow of Nikolai Zakharchenko, a pensioner who committed suicide after being accused of growing hemp, is satisfied with the court's decision to compensate for her moral harm suffered from her husband's unjustified criminal prosecution and death; but she finds it more important to bring their neighbour to criminal liability for false denunciation.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on August 18, 2020, Nikolai Zakharchenko, an 85-year-old resident of Nartkala (the capital of the Urvan District of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR)) committed suicide. A few days earlier, law enforcers conducted a search in his house, during which they seized the remains of a cannabis bush. A drug possession case was opened. The widow regarded law enforcers as a trigger for her husband's suicide. The court appointed her a million roubles as compensation for moral harm.

According to the local Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the pensioner, "having dried the leaves, kept them for personal consumption without the purpose of sale." After Zakharchenko's death, the investigator closed the case, explaining this by the insignificance of the offense. The widow said that her husband was afraid to die in prison.

The widow said that she was 85 years old and had undergone a number of major surgeries. In her opinion, the family suffered because of a denunciation by a neighbour who wrote to the police that Zakharchenko was growing hemp in the garden for pain relief and sale.

"I have never anesthetized myself with anything, because I don't need it. I live more than 20 years after cancer. My husband never even smoked cigarettes, he only drank on holidays ... The cannabis bush grew by itself; we didn't even know what it was. And when we found out, we tore it out and wanted to feed it to rabbits," the widow has explained.

According to her story, law enforcers offered her husband to confess that he grew marijuana only for personal use, promising then a "short term", and threatened that otherwise he would receive 12 years in prison.