MOSCOW, August 31 (RAPSI) — Prosecutors asked the Moscow Regional Court to sentence doctors Elena Belaya and Elina Sushkevich, who used to work in Kaliningrad, a city in the western part of Russia, to 13 years in prison as the women were found guilty of the death of a baby by a jury, RAPSI was told in court.

The prosecutor in the case also petitioned that the doctors were disqualified from practicing  medicine for three years, the agency’s interlocutor said.

In May last year, the First Appeals Court of General Jurisdiction overturned the verdict against Belaya and Sushkevich, who were acquitted by the jury in a high-profile case of the death of a premature baby in the Kaliningrad city maternity hospital No. 4. The case was forwarded for a new trial to a first instance court.

Investigators alleged that in November 2018, Belaya, at the time the acting head physician of the said maternity hospital, learned about the birth of a premature baby weighing about 700 grams. In order not to spoil the statistics and having in mind that the risk of the death of the child was very great, she decided to kill the newborn, as bad statistics could prevent her appointment as full-time head physician, investigators believe.

According to the Investigative Committee, to commit the murder, Belaya turned for assistance to Sushkevich, who, as part of a medical team, administered a lethal dose of magnesium sulfate to the newborn. At the same time, deliberately false information was entered into the medical report of childbirth, that the fetus died before birth.