Pervomaisky District Court of Mykolaiv region will hear a criminal case on the assault on and raping of a 29-year-old resident of the village of Vradiivka (Mykolaiv region), Iryna Krashkova.

Mykolaiv Court of Appeals has issued relevant ruling on Monday.

According to an Interfax-Ukraine reporter, the state prosecutors and Krashkova's lawyer proposed to hold the hearing of the case at Pervomaisky District Court. Meanwhile, three of the four defense lawyers of the accused stated that the case should be considered by a Mykolaiv court for safety reasons.

As reported, on June 26, two police officers and a taxi driver are alleged to have pulled a 29-year-old woman into a car in the village of Vradiivka, Mykolaiv region, and taken her to a nearby forest, where they beat her up and raped her. The victim was hospitalized with fractures of the skull, cuts to the head and face, and multiple severe bruises.

Two police officers - Lieutenant Dmytro Polischuk and Senior Lieutenant Yevhen Dryzhak – and a local taxi driver, Mykhailo Rabinenko, are suspected of having committed the crime.

Polischuk and Rabinenko were detained on June 30, while the fact that the second policeman, Dryzhak, who supposedly had an alibi, was not immediately detained triggered protests by local residents, who demanded his arrest.

On July 1, local residents stormed the district police department demanding that the police officers involved be prosecuted.

Dryzhak was detained on July 2. On July 3, the court ruled that he be placed under two months detention as a pre-trial restriction measure.

On August 5, the charges against three suspects were changed from causing grievous bodily harm to an attempted murder committed with extreme cruelty with selfish motives, in order to conceal another crime by prior agreement of the parties.

In addition, one of the suspects is charged with carrying out an assault, another two with rape, an assault, as well as committing a number of official crimes.

On August 14, the court also extended the period of detention for Dryzhak until September 27.

On September 2, the Prosecutor's Office in Mykolaiv region sent to court an indictment against four suspects of committing a crime against Krashkova.