Police are investigating claims that a man kept the mother of his four children as a prisoner and sex slave for six years - never letting her out of their cramped home.
Rinat Bilyanov is being probed in Russia over accusations of beating and torturing his partner Lilia whose children were all born after she was "taken hostage".
The pair met on a dating site for Tatar Muslims and were not officially married but did undergo a religious wedding ceremony, she said.
The woman, in her 20s, was shut in a flat with concrete walls, all the windows boarded, and no daylight in Pushkino, Moscow region, she alleged.
She was pregnant four times during her years of captivity, her lawyer said. "He said I could leave the flat only when my parents paid him 200 million rubles [$3.37 million]," she said.
This week she managed to call the police who came to free her and her four children after storming the flat, she said, according to Mash news site.
Her "husband" took the children out occasionally but kept her shut away in the tiny apartment. "He kicked me, beating me with a stick," she said.
"He said to our son: 'Ruslan, when you grow up, you must keep beating her like this, with your fists, kicking her, because she is very bad.'"
She and the children are now in a shelter for women. The children cannot speak properly and have "development problems".
Police confirmed a preliminary criminal investigation which could see the man jailed for seven years.
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This article has been adapted from its original source.
