In a case which has shocked Russians, three Khachaturian sisters admitted to killing their father after he subjected them to mental, sexual, and physical abuse spanning years.

Axar.az reports citing RT that they faced charges of premeditated murder, but now their lawyer says the Russian Prosecutor General’s office has ordered investigators to drop that arraignment, and instead reclassify the killing as lawful self-defense.

Lawyer Aleksey Parshin told that officials have declined to support the Investigative Committee’s case against the sisters. Parshin said that the Khachaturian sisters responded to their father’s “unlawful attacks, which created a real danger to their life and health,” and that the prosecutor general regarded their actions as “within the legal limits of necessary self-defense, which brings the criminal prosecution to an end.”