Three top Russian cops have been jailed for raping a female police officer in a police station.

The incident happened last October 2018 when then 23-year-old young woman, had travelled to work on a bank holiday and decided to have a drink with senior colleagues to celebrate the fact it was a holiday, even though there was supposed to be working.

The drinking that later got out of control took place even though it was not allowed, and also present were two other women who worked in the same department.

Although under UK law the victims of sex assaults are not named, this is not the same in Russia where Guzel Sagitova’s name and photographs have been widely included in media coverage.

She told the court that after she arrived, she was taken into a toilet, where there are no CCTV cameras to confirm her story, and where she was raped by her three colleagues.

The three who have now been convicted and jailed Eduard Matveev, 51, who was the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in the Ufa district, as well as Salavat Galiev, 50, who was the chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Karmaskalinsky district, and Pavel Yaromchuk, 34, the head the migration department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Ufa district.

Pavel Yaromchuk has now been jailed for five and a half years and the other two, Salavat Galiev and Eduard Matveev, each received seven years in prison.

All three who have always denied the charges were convicted in December 2019 but appealed, and the convictions were quashed for two of them and reduced for the third, Yaromchuk, but this was overturned by the Samara Court of Cassation which sent it for a retrial that has now seen the men jailed for rape and a violent sex attack.

All three as well as the victim were fired for drinking alcohol in the workplace.

The woman has also put in an appeal for compensation, which was originally for 30 million RUB (350,000 GBP). But by 15th August, she had decided to increase it to 100 million RUB (1.2 million GBP) because of the way the defence lawyers were aggressively questioning her and trying to pin the blame on her, and after further anger at the questions she was being posed, she then increased it to 300 million RUB (3.5 million GBP ).

Her lawyer said it was because of the unnecessary suffering she was being put through by the unfair questions that the lawyers for the three men were asking her.

Lawyers for the three men claim the young woman, who was herself the daughter of a senior police officer, did not remember all the details of the case because she was drunk.

In the end, the court took 3 million rubles (35,000 GBP) from them as compensation for non-pecuniary damage