Former police investigator wanted as wrongful conviction claims surface in Bukhara

Lochinbek Toshpulatov, a former investigator at the Bukhara City Police Department's investigation unit, is being sought by the Bukhara Regional Internal Affairs Department on charges of evidence fabrication under Article 230¹, Part 2, clause (a) of the Criminal Code – meaning the alleged falsification of evidence by a group of persons acting in prior conspiracy.

Toshpulatov was dismissed from his post on December 29, 2025, after criminal proceedings were initiated against him by the Bukhara Regional Prosecutor's Office's department for investigating especially serious crimes. In an interview published on YouTube, he pushed back against the charges, claiming the case against him was orchestrated by Deputy Regional Prosecutor Aliakbar Pulatov and Otabek Muzaffarov, head of the regional prosecutor's investigation unit.

What the investigator says

According to Toshpulatov, the criminal case at the center of the controversy had originally sat dormant in the regional prosecutor's office for three years. Muzaffarov, he said, had halted the proceedings on the grounds that the perpetrator was "unknown" – before the case was transferred to his unit.

Once he took over, Toshpulatov says he identified nearly 500 victims and carried out searches at the defendants' homes on the orders of Deputy Prosecutor Pulatov to recover assets for compensation. When he flagged that some seized items were irrelevant to the case, he was told they would not be returned – and that any complaint would be routed back to the same office. Since the prosecutor held authority to approve or overturn any decision in the case, Toshpulatov says he had little room to act independently.

He completed the investigation and sent the case to court, where sentences were handed down. Two years later, relatives of the convicted men filed complaints alleging that gold jewelry seized during the searches had never been returned. That complaint, Toshpulatov says, is what led to the criminal case now being used against him – filed under Article 207 of the Criminal Code by the Bukhara City Prosecutor's Office.

The connection to a Kun.uz investigation

The case intersects with a Kun.uz investigation into a long-running dispute between a construction company and apartment buyers on Shota Rustaveli Street in Tashkent, where promised homes remained undelivered after seven years and a court ordered the contested building to be demolished.

Umidjon Nurullayev, the original founder of Best Building Company LLC, is at the heart of that story. According to Toshpulatov, it was his unlawful conduct of the investigation that led to Nurullayev being wrongfully convicted in the case involving Bobur Raupov and others.

The conviction and its contested grounds

Court records reviewed by Kun.uz show that several charges initially brought against Nurullayev by the preliminary investigation body were subsequently dropped. He was ultimately convicted on a narrower set of articles and sentenced to 11 years in prison. On appeal, one additional charge was removed and the sentence reduced by one year. The Bukhara Regional Court's review panel left the appellate ruling unchanged.

Nurullayev served as director of Absolute Elite Building LLC between 2018 and 2019. The company's founder, Bobur Raupov, along with Ibrohimjon Murotov and Khurshid Razakov, were also named as defendants. The case centers on contracts the firm signed with clients to demolish an old residential building at 25 Hamza Street in Bukhara and replace it with a modern apartment block within one year – a promise that was not kept, and money that was not returned.

Notably, Raupov himself stated during the investigation that Nurullayev had no involvement in the episodes for which he was charged. The court records also confirm that Nurullayev left the company and moved to Tashkent in 2019. His lawyer says a supervisory appeal to the Supreme Court is being prepared, arguing that Nurullayev had no connection to the crimes committed by Raupov and the others.