Danka Ilic Murder Trial Moves to Negotin High Court

The case against Dejan Dragijevic and Srdjan Jankovic, charged with killing two-year-old Danka Ilic, has been transferred from the Zajecar High Court to the High Court in Negotin. A pretrial hearing is expected to take place before the end of September, with the main trial due to open in early October. The proceedings arrive more than two years after the girl’s murder in March 2024.

The transfer was ordered by the Appellate Court in Nis in late August. The reason is procedural: judges at the Zajecar High Court had already ruled on earlier stages of the same case, and under the law they cannot try the same defendants again. Judges from Negotin will now hear the case, while prosecutors will continue to come from Zajecar.

The case reached trial only after a supplementary investigation. The Appellate Court in Nis twice sent the indictment confirmation ruling back to the Zajecar High Court. The second time, it ordered that an entirely new judicial panel, based in Negotin, decide on it. The Negotin High Court told Tanjug it has one month to schedule the pretrial hearing.

What the indictment alleges

The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Zajecar has charged both defendants with aggravated murder committed in complicity and is seeking a life sentence for each. According to the indictment, Dejan Dragijevic and Srdjan Jankovic struck the two-year-old girl on March 26, 2024, in Banjsko Polje near Bor, driving a vehicle belonging to the public utility company JKP Vodovod, where both men were employed. The indictment states they placed her body in the vehicle and dumped it at a landfill, from where it was later moved. The entire episode, according to the indictment, lasted about seven minutes. The girl’s body has still not been found, which remains the central gap in the case.

The defendants will be transferred from pretrial detention in Zajecar to the detention unit at Negotin District Prison. The first hearings will be scheduled on consecutive days to avoid the daily transport of defendants and prosecutors between Zajecar and Negotin. The further pace of the trial will depend on the questioning of witnesses, among them the murdered girl’s parents and relatives, as well as local residents and neighbors. The two defendants will sit together in the dock. Until a hearing schedule settles into a rhythm, the court will convene daily, precisely because of the distance between Zajecar and Negotin; only after that will it decide on the pace of further hearings based on how the evidentiary proceedings unfold.

Will the trial be open to the public

Sources differ on this point. The Negotin High Court told Tanjug that the pretrial hearing will be closed to the public. According to information reported by Kurir, and picked up by other outlets, the main trial itself will be open to the public, with a ban on filming using mobile phones. Journalists will be allowed to take notes during the proceedings. The Negotin courtroom seats about fifty people, so given the level of media interest, crowding is expected.

Defense lawyers for both men have said they will seek an acquittal.

Proceedings against Radoslav Dragijevic, father of defendant Dejan Dragijevic, who had been suspected of helping move the body, have been permanently discontinued. Dejan Dragijevic’s brother, Dalibor Dragijevic, died on April 7, 2024, inside the Bor Police Department, while in custody, less than a month after Danka Ilic’s murder.

The case has already passed through several rulings by the Appellate Court in Nis, which ordered the supplementary investigation before the indictment was finally confirmed. Only after that confirmation could the case be forwarded to trial, and the change of venue from Zajecar to Negotin is the latest of those rulings.