Alas, here it goest!

Usually neighbourhood police inspectors visit citizens in cases of quarrels between family members or neighbours or any other cases of petty hooliganism. But police officer Ersan Nurkanov called Zhanar Asylkhanova, inbusiness.kz reporter for the East Kazakhstan region to investigate... a slander claim!

Yulia Mironova, member of  Ust-Kamenogorsk city maslikhat (local executive committee)  filed a complaint against the journalist to the Ulba police department. She  acted in accordance with  administrative procedures, that were recently adopted when the article "Slander" was transferred  from the Criminal Code to the Code of  administrative offenses.

According to Adil Soz, this is the first slander charge that will be heard by administrative court (in case it comes to trial). We will not try to guess  whether the administrative court will recognise a typo, that  was promptly corrected, as delibarate dissimination  of  knownly false information. But we cannot help but asking: are local internal affairs bodies competent enough to investigate information disputes? How are they going to  distinguish a deliberately malicious lie from a typo? What evidence would be considered a proof of intented slander?

Judges of civil and criminal boards used to be taught at all kinds of courses and seminars how to analyze words and phrases. Maybe it's time to help the district police officers and to teach them the same things? It looks as if someone thinks that police has no other things to do but to investigate slander...