Dalibor Dragijevic Death in Bor: Eight Officers Arrested

The Internal Control Sector of the Interior Ministry detained eight officers of the Criminal Police Directorate (UKP) on November 6, 2026, on orders of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nis. They are suspected of involvement in the death of Dalibor Dragijevic, who was pronounced dead on April 7, 2024, on the premises of the Police Department in Bor. No one has been found guilty, and the suspects are only now being brought in for questioning.

What the prosecutors say

According to a statement from the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nis, the detainees are identified by initials: N. P, M. Lj, B. M, I. T, M. S, M. B. and Z. Dj, all from Belgrade, and J. K. from Nova Pazova. They are charged with grievous bodily harm resulting in death, together with abuse and torture as co-perpetrators. The statement refers to the injured party as D. D.

The suspects have been ordered held for up to 48 hours. After that they will be brought to the Nis prosecutors for questioning, along with a criminal complaint. The prosecutors said they would announce the outcome of the questioning of all suspects in a statement on their website.

As far as is known, the Interior Ministry had not commented on the arrests of its officers by the time of publication.

Why were the arrests delayed?

In the same statement, the prosecutors say the arrest warrants are not new. The public prosecutor had issued them earlier, but the police did not carry them out:

“We inform the public that the public prosecutor of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nis had previously issued orders to detain all of the suspects for the criminal offenses in question, but that members of the Interior Ministry, the Internal Control Sector, did not act on the public prosecutor’s orders, about which we also informed the public.”

In other words, the prosecutors claim the case waited two and a half years for the execution of orders they had issued themselves. What the Internal Control Sector has to say about this is not available in public sources.

What happened in Bor in April 2024

Dalibor Dragijevic of Zlot, near Bor, was arrested on April 6, 2024, on suspicion of helping his brother Dejan move the body of two-year-old Danka Ilic. He died during detention, in the night between April 6 and 7. The Interior Ministry said at the time that the death was natural, citing the coroner’s finding.

The finding of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Belgrade was different. Doctors found injuries across the body: broken ribs on both sides of the chest, bruising, injuries to the head and groin, and flesh separated from the bones of the soles of the feet, which is attributed to blows.

Danka Ilic disappeared on March 26, 2024, in Banjsko Polje. Dejan Dragijevic and Srdjan Jankovic confessed to the killing on April 4, then withdrew the confession, saying they had given it out of fear because of torture. A hearing in that case was held before the Higher Court in Negotin on October 30. That is a separate proceeding, and this case concerns the death of a man in police custody.

What the officers said

The weekly Radar earlier published statements by the officers who were with Dragijevic on the night he died. According to that account, they first took him along the road to Dubasnica and then to the cemetery in Zlot, explaining that he led them “from place to place to show us where he had buried the girl.” They returned him to the station in Bor at about 2.30 a.m. on April 7. According to the same statements, he fell ill, and the ambulance arrived at 2.54. Radar reports that none of the statements say anyone noticed injuries on him.

In its statement, the prosecutors’ office does not say whether the authors of those statements are among the eight detained, so that link is not made here.

The case remains with the Nis prosecutors. When the 48-hour detention expires and the questioning is done, the prosecutors will announce what steps they have taken.