Police Hiding Officer Who Beat Driver Not To Hinder Promotion Of His Boss

The Chief of the police department offered to pay for the silence.

The policeman attacked a man from behind, beat him in the face with his uniform boots, saying “I’ll kill you next time”. This is how the Easter celebration ended for 42-year-old Vital Saroka, a driver at the post-office in Uzda. So far, the man could not bring the offender to responsibility.

The offender is the officer at the local district department of internal affairs Andrei Karachun. According to Vital Saroka, they are hiding the assaulter from punishment in hospitals, because the Head of the department is about to be promoted, and this police department has been holding the 1st place in the rating of the best police departments in the country, Belsat reports.

“I’ll kill you next time”

In the 1990s Vital Saroka served in the border troops, and later, to feed the family, he went to work as a long distance trucker. For the last 20 years he has worked as a driver at the local post-office. In the evening on April 27, the man was spending his free time barbecuing at his neighbour’s place.

At about 10 p.m. juvenile inspector Alena Siarheyeva arrived, together with district police officer Aleh Kazlouski. The family of Vital Saroka’s friend is registered as socially vulnerable. Alena Siarheyeva came to check whether the daughter of the neighbour’s girlfriend was asleep, but behaved in a boorish manner, showing clear disrespect for the present.

“I said that the child would have dinner and then go to bed. I asked her to calm down and not to insult people, including me and my family, and treat us with respect. She said: you will regret this. Then she and district police officer Kazlouski left.

The man disregarded these threats and continued cooking meat, but 15 minutes later someone attacked him from behind, knocked him down to the ground and started beating with feet. Vital recognized the attacker - it was Alena Siarheyeva’s boyfriend, traffic cop Andrei Karachun.

“He called me a degenerate, threatened to kill me next time. He was beating me with his uniform boots, I did not resist. Siarheyeva and the district officer saw everything, but did not stop him. The inspector was holding my friend, preventing him from defending me. At some stage, she said “Andrei, enough, let him go”. They left together, leaving me lying under the fence. The neighbour called the police,” the man says.

18 days in hospital

Vital walked home by himself, his wife and daughter met him. They rendered emergency aid. Later, policemen arrived. The law-enforcers took explanations, but refused to accept the complaint against Andrei Karachun, and didn’t take the man to the medical examination.

“They cursed me and said, like, we don’t accept complaints against our guys. As for medical examination, you can go there by yourself on Monday. An investigator came, he accepted my statement and we went to the ambulance.”

It was Vital’s wife who took him to the local hospital. The doctors X-rayed the man and did some tests, and he was placed in the surgical ward at night. The investigator assured the man that on Monday, April 29 he would be sent to the forensic examination, but both the medical staff and the policemen tired to prevent Saroka from seeing a relevant specialist.

“There is no such expert in our town. They didn’t want to let me out of the hospital, and give me an appointment card, they said I should not move then. I demanded a magnetic resonance tomography of the head, because I had a headache, and the temperature remained at the level of 37.2, but the neurologist said I did not need a tomography.”

Vital Saroka achieved the expertise though. The expert’s conclusion contained, in addition to bruises on the head and face, concussion and kidney contusion, 18 traumas altogether. He spent 18 days in hospital on a drip.

“No one believed I would go to the court”

The victim says that everyone was in shock, that he filed a statement against the policeman:

“Siarheyeva threatened the neighbor to shut up and not testify against Karachun. They thought that I would withdraw the complaint when I came out of hospital. Colleagues of Karachun came to the hospital, several people at a time - to see what he had done to me. They say that he was sober then. Some felt sorry for me, there are also those who have stopped contact with me and my wife. And I, apart from the mail, deliver pensions, so they give me weapons. Every day I receive and hand over a gun, I see them in the department and I don’t understand how come they are not embarrassed to look into my eyes.”

Vital Saroka after beating. A trace from the boot is visible on the head

Having been refused the offer not to sue, Alena Siarheyeva wanted revenge by bringing Vital to administrative responsibility for insult. Like, on the night of the beating Saroka insulted her first, and she has a video proof of that. However, the court found that the woman was the first to swear and provoked a scandal.

The head of the police department wanted to pay for silence

The man was promised that the offender would be fired, inspector Siarheyeva would be demoted to the captain, but it didn’t get to the point. Vital says that Head of the Uzda district department of internal affairs Andrei Biarozka came and asked to make peace, not to bring the case to court. He said that he would compensate for moral and material damage, which the man estimated at $ 2500.

“The money, they said, will be passed through a third party. I said no, send it to a card or wire transfer. And this was it, no one contacted me”.

Vital Saroka after beating. A boot trace is visible on the head

Police officers did not do a normal check on the statement, Vital Saroka claims. The man says that the interrogation of witnesses was delayed, and his wife herself was running around, looking for witnesses.

The Investigatory Committee qualified the case under Article 153 of the Criminal Code (“Light bodily harm”). The check was completed on June 10 and the victim was told that he could go to court to institute criminal proceedings against Karachun.

Case Review Deadlocked

Andrei Karachun has never appeared at hearings during all this time. Each time, sick leaves were opened for him on the day before the trial.

“Karachun is hiding in hospitals. Allegedly sick all the time. I ask: why don't you commission him if he has been sick since April? At the same time, he travels around the city, he was seen more than once. The judge is also tired of this farce. Once he wanted to organize a visiting session. While collecting the necessary medical documentation, Karachun was discharged all of a sudden. Everything goes in a circle. As soon as a court hearing is scheduled, Karachun is back in the hospital. And every time it’s a new one.”

Vital Saroka wrote to Minister of the Interior Yury Karayeu, but received a response from the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Minsk Regional Executive Committee that the sick-lists were real, and that the patient could not be held responsible until he recovered. He was also advised to independently find Karachun in order to prove that he was cheating. Vital explains this behavior by the fact that in November Andrei Karachun retires ahead of schedule.

- They are obviously killing the clock. Moreover, the head of the police department is expecting promotion, they do not want to spoil the statistics, according to which the Uzda police station remains among the top three in the country.

Vital Saroka after beating. A boot trace is visible on the head

On Friday, September 20, Andrei Karachun was supposed to be discharged from another hospital. The court ordered to bring him to court by force. However, there is no information about the next hearing.

The judge's decision on the forced transfer of Andrei Karachun to court

The editors of belsat.eu tried to take a comment from the head of the Uzda District Department of Internal Affairs Andrei Biarozka, but he did not answer the calls.