A 26-year-old taxi driver in Aktobe went on trial accused of torturing his common-law wife, but the charge against him was reclassified, the website infohub.kz reports.
According to the case file, the defendant beat the woman and, when she tried to hide from him in a stairwell, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her from side to side.
The woman fell to her knees, and the defendant then began to strangle her. In court, the man said he had been in an unofficial marriage for two years and had been held to account repeatedly, but the woman forgave him each time. According to him, while in custody at the pre-trial detention center he firmly set out on the path to reform and asked not to be deprived of his freedom.
The victim confirmed that conflicts between them had happened before: she filed complaints, he was held to account, but they later made up because they were genuinely in a close relationship. This time she also forgave him and asked the court not to deprive him of his freedom.
The court concluded that no torture had occurred, reclassified the charge as the criminal offense of "battery" and sentenced the Aktobe man to 12 days of arrest. After the verdict was announced, he was released immediately because the sentence had been served, as he had already spent almost five months in the pre-trial detention center. The court ordered him to live separately from the victim for a month and not to pursue her for a year.