Photo: Ministry of the Interior of Serbia
Fourteen months have passed since the two-year-old girl Danka Ilić disappeared in the vicinity of Bor. The case shook Serbia, the girl's body was not found, and the prosecutor's office is now starting to reconstruct the event
More than a year has passed since Serbia was shaken by the news of the two-year-old's disappearance Thank you Ilić in the vicinity of Bor.
The system was then activated for the first time in Serbia Find me, a platform intended for urgent notification of the public in the event of the disappearance of a minor, the police were on the ground, searching day and night, videos of a girl in Vienna that resembled the missing two-year-old appeared.
Serbia was on its feet for ten days, after which Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announced that the girl had been killed.
Fourteen months later, in Banjsko polje on Monday (June 16), the reconstruction of the events of March 26, 2024, when the two-year-old girl Danka Ilić disappeared, began.
The reconstruction is carried out by the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Zaječar, together with forensic experts and members of the MUP, and the suspects for her murder, Dejan Dragijević and Srđan Janković, as well as the girl's parents, are also present.
The reconstruction is done as part of it investigation updates which was ordered by the Court of Appeal in Nis at the end of April this year. As part of the supplementary investigation, I. I, the girl's mother, was questioned again.
The Appellate Court in Niš ordered the completion of the investigation after twice returning the decision confirming the indictment to the High Court in Zaječar, with the second time ordering that the decision be made by a completely new panel of the High Court in Negotin.
Srđan Janković and Dejan Dragijević are charged with the criminal offense of aggravated murder in complicity with the indictment, which was handed over to the court, but also returned for further investigation, while Radoslav Dragijević, Dejan Dragijević's father, is charged with the criminal offense of aiding the perpetrator after the crime has been committed and failing to report the crime and the perpetrator.
The fourth suspect, Dejan Dragijević's brother, Dalibor Dragijević, died on April 7 last year in the premises of the Police Department in Bor during detention. Who killed him has not yet been determined.
The body of the missing, and according to the police, murdered Danka Ilić - has not been found to this day.
Supplement to the investigation
At the end of April 2025, the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Zaječar returned the indictment to supplement the investigation.
Among other things, the appellate court ordered the first-instance court to order, in the re-decision procedure, that the investigation be supplemented, a reconstruction of the event be carried out in the same meteorological conditions, time of day, and according to the defendants, I. I, the girl's mother, who should be re-examined as a witness.
After the Appellate Court in Niš twice returned the decision confirming the indictment to the High Court in Zaječar, the second time it ordered that the decision be made by a completely new court panel.
After that, the High Court in Zaječar sent a request to the Court of Appeal in Niš for the determination of another competent court, when the Court of Appeal decided that it should be the High Court in Negotin.
What do we know so far?
Two-year-old Danka Ilić disappeared on March 26, 2024 in Banjsko Polje.
That Danka Ilić was killed was learned from the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, at the Government session he attended on April 4 last year.
He then said that the police had arrested two people who killed Danka Ilić.
The two arrested employees of Vodovod confessed to the crime and described in detail the way in which they committed it, said Bratislav Gašić, then Minister of the Interior.
The indictment, which the Court of Appeals returned for amendment, quoted the defendants' words given during their first interrogations before the police and the prosecutor's office, in which they admitted to the crime.
The defendants retracted their confession a few weeks later, saying that they were indeed in Vojvode Radomir Putnika Street that day, but that they did not see Danka.
They also confirmed that they stopped at the landfill, but not to dump the body, but rather so that one of them could make a phone call.
They confessed to the murder because they had been beaten beforehand, they claimed before the prosecutor, the indictment states.
Suspect's death in prison
Dalibor Dragijević, brother of the accused Dejan, died at the Bor Police Department after being detained on suspicion of assisting in the murder.
In the first statement, the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that Dalibor Dragijević "fell ill".
"Despite the timely response of the police officers and the doctors of the Health Center in Bor, who tried resuscitation, he died at 3:10 a.m., and the coroner's doctors concluded that it was a natural death," the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced.
The weekly "Radar", however, published the details of the autopsy findings, citing "numerous injuries on the body" of Dragijević.
"Death was violent and occurred as a result of respiratory and circulatory disorders due to multiple soft tissue contusions and bone fractures," the autopsy report says.
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