In Penza on 22 July, Valery Bychkov's lawyer, Sergey Cherepovskiy, was detained immediatley after the court made the ruling to free his client on orders not to leave the city. According to the obtained information, Cherepovskiy is being held in custody in investigatory prison of Penza.

He has been charged under part 1 of Article 318 of the Russian Criminal Code ("use of violence against a representative of the authority"). The maximum penalty under this article is up to 5 years of deprivation of freedom.

The criminal case has been instituted on Cherepovskiywas instituted after the lawyer had argued with an officer of court about him taking the photo footage of the court session. Cherepovskiy was arrested on 22 July at the gate of the colony when Valery Bychkov was leaving it after the court ruling. Then the lawyer was taken to the prosecutor's office of Penza Oktyabrsky district. After that he was moved to the investigatory prison. The prosecutor's office demands that he be kept in custody before court proceedings start. The decision will be taken in the evening of July 24.

Human rights and activists of Penza connect this arrest with the fact that it was Cherepovskiy who managed to take and release the video interview with Bychkov in the court room, who took the video footage of how guards were dragging the seriusly ill person down the stairs. They explain the arrest as "revenge" on the lawyer who handed over the video footage to independent media and one of local TV station which aired it in the evening news program.

Cherepovskiy is also a lawyer of another activist from Penza who was detained in March this year, the leader of the Penza branch of the "Yabloko" party Oleg Kochkin.