In July 2018, searches were carried out in Penza and criminal cases were initiated against 6 local Jehovah’s Witnesses. It turned out that since the fall of 2017, the believers had been under covert surveillance. Vladimir Alushkin spent six months in a pre-trial detention center. The UN Working Group officially
recognized his arrest as arbitrary. In the summer of 2019, the case was submitted to the Leninsky District Court of Penza. During the hearings, it turned out that the protocols of the witnesses’ interrogations were partially falsified by the investigation, and one of the witnesses told the court that she had testified under pressure. In December 2019, Judge Roman Tanchenko sentenced Vladimir Alushkin to 6 years in prison, and Tatyana Alushkina, Galia Olkhova, Vladimir Kulyasov, Andrey Magliv and Denis Timoshin to 2 years suspended. In September 2020, the Penza Regional Court commuted the sentence of Vladimir Alushkin, replacing 6 years in prison with 4 years probation. For the rest, the court upheld the sentence - 2 years suspended. On December 9, 2021, the First Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction upheld the verdict.
