The former head of the "Committee against Torture" Igor Kalyapin was attacked in his own house near Nizhny Novgorod. An unknown man tried to cut his face and strangle him. Now the human rights activist is in the hospital with a concussion, his face is bruised and his nose may be broken. This was announced by the HRC in his Telegram channel.

The attack took place on the evening of 24 August. Kalyapin met the attacker at the birthday party of a former law enforcement officer. Here is how the human rights activist himself described the attack in a conversation with RTVI:

“I was at a birthday party for a former employee [of law enforcement agencies], where his friend was, also, possibly, a former police officer, but I don’t know for sure. We did not quarrel with him, did not conflict, everything was fine. But at some point he attacked me. He was not himself, inadequate. It was clearly an alcoholic psychosis. What caused this behavior in him, I know. <...> He attacked me, knocked me down, inflicted several strong blows on the face. Everything is broken for me."

Valery Fadeev, chairman of the Russian Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, said he saw no connection between the attack and Kalyapin's human rights activities.

Igor Kalyapin headed the Committee against Torture until February 2022. In January, at his mother's house in Nizhniy Novgorod, unidentified people pasted posters with insults. There he was accused of "selling his fatherland for grants from the United States and Germany" and helping terrorists, and was also called a "foreign agent." Prior to this, the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, also called Kalyapin a terrorist and called for him to be detained.

The day before , it became known about the death of Salman Tepsurkaev, the moderator of the 1ADAT Telegram chat, which criticized Kadyrov, who was kidnapped by Chechen security forces in 2020.