The initial video that got the Russian internet and animal rights activists fuming was filmed by a young couple in the Urals city of Magnitogorsk earlier in April, but surfaced in the news on Monday after heated discussions on a local internet forum. The woman that turns the washing machine on, identified as 19-year-old Dinara Iskulova, posted the clip on her social media page.Iskulova and her boyfriend decided to“punish” the cat in this way because it hadn’t used its litter box. In the video, as the machine starts to rotate, the terrified animal cries, frantically trying to keep the drum in place. The couple, meanwhile, jokes about the cat’s panic before letting the poor creature out.
Days after the video went viral, the woman attracted the interest of Magnitogorsk police – for a different but not entirely unrelated reason.Another video on the Iskulova’s page featured a group of young people kicking a boy rolled up in a carpet. A six or seven-year-old child can be heard screaming and crying. The boy’s 33-year-old mother also appears in the video, but does nothing to stop the beating.

“Following from the evidence uncovered in the investigation into what happened, a criminal case for torture of a minor has been opened,”the spokesperson for the office of criminal investigations for the Chelyabinsk region, told Chelyabinsk.ru website.

Public prosecutor Sergey Gorshkov told the website that “The identities of all the people involved have been established, as well as the locations where these flagrant acts took place. All the necessary evidence is being gathered at the moment.”

According to media reports, Iskulova and her friends have not admitted to any wrongdoing. As to the cat, they insist it was a necessary “educational” measure.

Details have emerged regarding Iskulova’s background suggesting that she grew up in a violent, drinking family, and that she had already been registered with police for an unspecified minor offence. It also became known, that her mother has recently died.