Last Updated on May 3, 2019 by LawEuro
Information Note on the Court’s case-law 225
January 2019
Rashkovi v. Bulgaria (dec.) – 52257/09
Decision 11.12.2018 [Section V]
Article 3
Degrading treatment
Inhuman treatment
Effective investigation
Search of grounds around the home of a pregnant women, allegedly causing a premature birth: inadmissible
Facts – The applicants are husband and wife. On 8 March 2007 a team of police officers and forest wardens, suspecting the husband of fraudulent activity in the timber trade, went to their home address, where they stayed from 1.45 to 3.45 p.m. The gate to the property, which was fifty metres from the house, was closed with a chain, which the police officers forced open in order to search the grounds for timber stored there. At 8.20 p.m. the female applicant, who was in her 36th week of pregnancy, gave birth at home, allegedly owing to the stress caused by the search. She was taken to a hospital maternity ward: the child weighed 2.2 kg and measured 49 cm. The mother and child left hospital a week later, in good health. In October 2009 the applicant lodged, unsuccessfully, a criminal complaint against the officers involved in the search.
Law – Article 3
(a) Substantive aspect – The wife, who was in her house when the police officers entered the property, had no direct contact with them that day: she did not appear before the police officers, was not threatened in any way and was not subjected to any other kind of constraint. Moreover, the search was carried out during the daytime by police officers who were recognisable by their uniforms, and who searched the grounds of the property only, and not the applicants’ home.
The present case was therefore different from those where the searches had been conducted early in the morning in the applicants’ actual homes, where the authorities had used special armed and masked police units, and where they had known that there were vulnerable persons present who were not implicated in the facts justifying the searches (see, in particular, Gutsanovi v. Bulgaria, 34529/10, 15 October 2013, Information Note 167).
Furthermore, according to the case file, the applicant had already experienced severe abdominal pain during the night preceding the search, and her pregnancy was already at an advanced stage. The birth took place several hours after the end of the search of the grounds. The mother and child were taken to the nearest hospital with a maternity ward, which they left eight days later in good health.
Conclusion: inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded).
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