5.  The applicant was born in 1969 and is now serving his sentence in a detention facility at Nizhniy Tagil.
6.  The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
7.  On 7 November 2013 a group of nine detainees, including the applicant, was scheduled for a transfer from a police station to a remand prison. A Gazel prison van was available for transfer. It was designed to transport a maximum of seven prisoners, but Police Major V., who was in charge of the transfer, took the decision to take all nine prisoners at once to save fuel.
8.  The prison van was manned by four officers. Driver G. and Major V. were seated in the front, and Officers K. and D. were riding in the rear part of the cabin next to the prisoner cells.
9.  Five prisoners were placed in the large cell in the van, and three prisoners in individual cells. As the applicant was a former law-enforcement officer, the transfer regulations required that he should be separated from the other detainees. However, no other individual cells were available, so he was allowed to ride in the rear together with Officers K. and D.
10.  Approximately half way to the destination, prisoners Sa., Ma. and Mu. kicked out the door of the large cell and attacked the convoy officers. Prisoner Mu. overpowered Officer D. and seized his holster containing a handgun. A struggle for the gun ensued and Mu. fired a shot at the floor. Prisoner Sa. grabbed Officer D. from behind, and a second shot was fired.
11.  Meanwhile, Officer K. pushed prisoner Ma. aside, drew his gun and told everyone to freeze or he would shoot. Prisoners Sa. and Mu. were still struggling with Officer D. for the gun. Officer K. shot at Sa. and hit him.
12.  Major V. came running to the back of the van and opened the door. More shots followed. Eventually, prisoner Mu. released the gun and threw it out of the van. At some point, a bullet ricocheted, wounding the applicant in his left shin.
13.  The applicant was taken to a local military hospital where his wounded leg was put in a cast. On the following day he was discharged and transferred to a prison hospital.
14.  In December 2013 the applicant complained to a prosecutor that he had been injured as a consequence of the grossly negligent actions of convoy officers who had breached the transfer regulations.
15.  On 9 January 2014 an investigator with the Bashkortostan Regional Division of the Investigations Committee refused to open a criminal case. He found no indications of gross negligence arising from the decision to transport two prisoners in excess of the van’s design capacity and that not putting the applicant in a cell had been motivated by “considerations of budgetary austerity and saving money allocated for the purchase of fuel”.
16.  On 4 December 2014 a deputy prosecutor of the Kirovskiy District in Ufa rejected the applicant’s complaint against the investigator’s decision.
17.  On 30 April 2015 the Kirovskiy District Court in Ufa upheld the investigator’s decision as lawful, noting that it had been within his competence to issue such a decision, and that the decision contained no defects of form. On 20 July 2015 the Supreme Court of the Bashkortostan Republic rejected an appeal against the District Court’s judgment.
18.  On 14 September 2015 the acting head of the regional division of the Investigations Committee ordered an additional “pre‑investigation inquiry” into whether an offence of negligence causing grievous bodily harm had been committed. Ten days later the investigator refused to institute criminal proceedings:
“... it does not appear possible to establish with certainty that the bullet which hit [the applicant] was shot from the handgun of Officer V., rather than from [the handgun of] Officer D., while it was in the possession of prisoner Mu. Besides, under Article [41] of the Criminal Code, causing damage to interests protected by criminal law is not a criminal offence if the act causing such damage was based on a reasonable risk assessment and sought to achieve a socially useful objective, such as preventing an attempted escape in the instant case.”
19.  On 8 February 2016 the deputy head of the regional division upheld the investigator’s decision refusing to institute criminal proceedings.
20.  On 5 May 2016 the supervising deputy prosecutor of the Bashkortostan Republic set the decision aside and ordered a forensic assessment of the applicant’s injury. On 6 June 2016 the investigator with the Central Investigations Department in Ufa again refused to institute criminal proceedings, noting that the applicant’s medical record could not be located. It had been sent to the facility where he was serving his sentence and that facility had not responded to the investigator’s request for a copy.
21.  In parallel criminal proceedings, on 22 December 2014 the Ordjonikidzevskiy District Court in Ufa convicted prisoners Mu. and Sa. of attempted escape from prison and sentenced them to five years’ imprisonment each. Convoy Officers K., D. and V. had been given the status of injured parties in those proceedings. The applicant testified as a witness.