The preliminary hearing in the case of missing two-year-old Danka Ilić began in Negotin with defendants Dejan Dragijević and Srđan Janković denying the charges. Danka’s parents faced the accused for the first time as the proceedings opened without the discovery of her body or DNA traces, according to a report describing the start of the hearing.¹

The defense used the opening stage to question the foundation of the prosecution’s case. Lawyer Milica Mitrović argued that the men had been treated as guilty despite the absence of physical evidence, asking: “we don't have a trace or a body.”² Her intervention framed the central defense argument: that allegations cannot substitute for proof of what happened to the child or where she is.

Pro-government coverage likewise focused on the evidentiary gap, describing the case as a “trial of the century” and asking how “2 workers without records” could have erased all traces. The same account emphasized that Danka’s body had not been found.³

The competing interpretations were already clear at the preliminary hearing. The defendants’ denial and their lawyers’ objections cast the prosecution’s case as unsubstantiated, while the prosecution’s allegations remain at the center of proceedings despite the lack of a body and publicly cited DNA evidence. The hearing therefore opened not with a resolution of Danka’s fate, but with a dispute over whether the available evidence can support the charges.

The supplied reports do not include a detailed prosecution response to the defense’s objections. Further proceedings will determine how the court assesses the missing physical evidence and the other material in the case.