The wife of a wounded Russian serviceman in Khabarovsk was forced to give up ownership of her apartment after men threatened to rape and kill her, the IA Regnum news agency reported, citing the woman's husband.
According to her husband, three men armed with a crowbar broke into the woman's home on 25 August while he was in hospital with a severe wound. The intruders took her passport and keys before taking her the next day to sign over the property.
The husband said his wife had received the apartment in February as a gift from her grandmother. A notary certified the deed of gift, making the woman the legal owner of the residence, before a stranger appeared several months later and claimed rights to a share in the flat.
Property transfer and threats in Khabarovsk
After forcing their way into the home with a crowbar on 25 August and seizing her passport and keys, the man who claimed a share in the property and two other men took the woman the following day to a Multifunctional Centre for State and Municipal Services to transfer the registration of the real estate. Her husband said the fraudsters pressured his wife, threatened to rape her and take her life, and staged the transaction so that it appeared she wanted to sell the apartment.
Multifunctional Centres, widely known across Russia as My Documents offices, are government administrative branches where residents submit paperwork for public services, including registering property transfers. Under Russian civil law, a notarised deed of gift transfers full property ownership between close relatives without a sale payment.
The woman's husband is a participant in what the Russian government officially calls its special military operation in Ukraine, the conflict that began in February 2022. Khabarovsk is one of the largest cities in the Russian Far East and serves as the administrative centre of Khabarovsk Krai near the border with China.
Police complaint and regional law enforcement
The wounded serviceman told IA Regnum, a Russian federal news agency, that police accepted the couple's formal complaint about the apartment seizure only on their third attempt to file it.
The case follows another recent policing report from the Russian Far East. In neighbouring Amur Oblast, a shift worker who contacted police over a missing bag of gold came under threat of a criminal case himself.
