Moscow Court Orders Nanny in Child Murder Case to Be Detained

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Monday, the decapitated body of a four-year-old child was found by law enforcement officers responding to a blaze in a Moscow apartment that is believed to have been started by her nanny. The woman allegedly waited for family members to leave before brutally killing the little girl. The suspect, a migrant from Uzbekistan who has been named as Gyulchehra Bobokulova, born in 1978, has since been detained.

The court ruled that the suspect can be detained until April 29, to allow time for the investigation. The suspect did not protest the arrest.

The woman, who is reportedly mentally unstable, may be held in the psychiatric facility of the Butyrskaya pretrial prison, a police source told RIA Novosti.

"Due to the detainee possibly requiring psychiatric help, following her arrest she may be placed in the Federal Penitentiary Service's second pretrial detention center in Moscow, where a psychiatric ward is located," the source said.

Earlier on Wednesday, a police source said that Bobokulova was in a relationship with a citizen of Tajikistan who espoused extremist Islamic beliefs. During her last visit to Uzbekistan, the woman exhibited aggressive behavior and displayed a hijab given to her by her partner, according to the source.

According to the Russian Federal Migration Service, the nanny was a migrant from Uzbekistan and worked in Russia without a work permit. The motive for the attack is still unknown. Previously, the woman claimed that the attack was motivated by her partner's cheating, but failed to link the murder to the cheating allegations.