Two residents of Khasavyurt were killed by a relative for refusing to quit their job.

A resident of Khasavyurt shot his ex-wife and her daughter in a cafe where they both worked. Sources cited the motive for the murder as the woman's refusal to quit the job, which her ex-husband called "shameful."

The double murder, for which a 46-year-old resident of Khasavyurt has been detained, occurred late in the evening on September 8. The victims were the 45-year-old ex-wife of the detainee and her 23-year-old daughter.

The detainee shot the women in the "Golden Fork" cafe on Bamovskaya Street; both victims were employees of this establishment. "The victims with injuries to various parts of their bodies were hospitalized, where they later died. The suspect has been detained, and the pistol has been seized," the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Dagestan reported on its Telegram channel on September 9.

The Investigative Committee, in turn, reported that one of the victims died on the spot, while the other died in the hospital. The man has been charged with double murder and illegal possession of firearms. The motive for the crime was described by the Investigative Committee as "personal animosity."

The man first shot his ex-wife several times and then shot her daughter when she tried to help her mother, writes the Telegram channel "112."

The deceased, 45-year-old Saida, divorced her husband due to domestic violence. The second victim, Salima, is her daughter from her first marriage; to the detainee, she was a stepdaughter. According to one of the deceased's colleagues, Saida's husband used drugs, beat her, and cut her with a knife. After the divorce, the woman took any job to support her five children, while her ex-husband stalked her: they had conflicts over the arrangement of communication with the children, and in addition, the man demanded that Saida and Salima quit the cafe - he claimed that such work was "shaming the family." Salima has three minor children, reported the project "Caucasus Without a Mother."

Domestic Violence and Femicide in the North Caucasus

The main feature of domestic violence in the republics of the North Caucasus is that this phenomenon almost does not exist in official statistics. Human rights defenders working in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan describe violence against women in the family as established and institutionalized: beatings are regarded in public consciousness as "deeply family matters," which is why women rarely turn to the police.

In December 2023, the president of the Center for the Study of Global Issues of Modernity and Regional Problems "Caucasus. World. Development" Said Sirazhudina published a report titled "Domestic Violence in the North Caucasus: Report on the Results of Monitoring the Situation in the Region and Analysis of Judicial Practice." According to the report, in Chechnya, "honor protection" is the dominant motive for the murder of women, while in Ingushetia, the threat to women also more often comes from the family itself.

In Dagestan and Ingushetia, they try to hide data on "honor killings," removing information about such cases from court websites, while in Chechnya, referencing a woman's immoral behavior as a motive for murder helps to obtain a lighter sentence, noted Sirazhudina.

Authorities have repeatedly sided with individuals against whom there were complaints from victims of domestic violence. In particular, in June 2021, law enforcement officers in civilian clothes burst into a shelter in Makhachkala, as a result of which Khalimat Taramova was handed over to her relatives and taken to Chechnya. One of the recent examples of such an approach by law enforcement was the criminal prosecution of Djamila Garunova: the case was initiated after Djamila left her husband, who regularly beat her, and the woman, six months pregnant, ended up in a pre-trial detention center.