Police called his death a contract killing, possibly motivated by vengeance on the part of Chechens or a "provocation" aiming to stir up ethnic strife in Moscow. He was shot several times by a gunman who escaped by car with an accomplice, police said.

Most Russians appear to have forgotten about Budanov, whose case caused a bitter split in Russian society after he was arrested a decade ago and charged with kidnapping, raping, and murdering Kungayeva, near the Chechen village of Tangi-Chu, where he was stationed during the second Chechen war.

Ms Kungayeva's family says that Russian soldiers dragged her from her home at night, before raping and murdering her in a drunken rampage.

Colonel Budanov initially faced a charge of rape as well as murder, but it was subsequently dropped.

The Memorial Human Rights Centre helped Visa Kungayev, the father of the murdered girl, to leave the village of Tangi-Chu together with his wife and children, and then hired the lawyer Abdulla Khamzayev. It was solely thanks to his energy, persistence and knowledge of law that the case was brought to its logical conclusion: the rapist and murderer in the uniform of a Russian colonel was behind bars.

According to  Usam Baysayev, an associate of the Ingushetian office of the "Memorial" Human Rights Centre  Budanov only went on trial because he had threatened the commander of the 58th Army, General Valery Gerasimov, who arrived at the Tangi-Chu base to investigate the abduction and death of the girls.

Budanov was arrested after waving a pistol under the General's nose.

Colonel Yuri Budanov