More than two years after paramedics found a lifeless toddler at an unlicensed home daycare in Vaughan, York Police have laid charges against the mother and daughter who ran the illegally overcrowded operation.

Olena Panfilova, 49, and Karina Rabadanova, 26, were arrested Wednesday and charged with obstruction of an investigation and destroying evidence. They were released and will return to court Nov. 12.

York Police spokesperson Andy Pattenden would not confirm two-year-old Eva Ravikovich’s cause of death Thursday nor describe the nature of the evidence destroyed, saying the investigation is ongoing.

“I find it disturbing and appalling to think people would destroy evidence or interfere with a police investigation in a case involving the death of a two-year (old) child,” said Patrick Brown, the lawyer for Ravikovich’s parents, in a statement.

Brown, who has filed a $3.5-million lawsuit against the daycare operators and the ministry of education, added, “We will continue to push forward to find justice for Eva.”

Panfilova’s lawyer, Richard Forget, said he hadn’t been informed that her daughter was also charged.

“They released her because she was not a flight risk (and) there’s no risk of her reoffending or committing other offences,” he said. “I have no further information.”

Eva was found in July 2013 in a home operating an unlicensed daycare on Yellowood Circle in Vaughan. Officials determined at least 35 children were enrolled and nine more children were kept in the house next door. The businesses were shuttered by health authorities, who found dangerous bacteria, 14 dogs and an unsecured swimming pool at the properties.

The provincial education ministry later admitted that it had failed to investigate four complaints of overcrowding at the daycare.

Eva’s death came amid a spate of daycare deaths in the GTA, four in seven months, and prompted a Star investigation that revealed light penalties for overcrowding, repeat offenders who opened new daycares after being shut down and loopholes that allowed private schools to operate daycares without any rules whatsoever.

The provincial ombudsman then released a daycare report decrying “systematic government ineptitude” and called Eva’s case the “canary in the coal mine.”

Ontario regional coroner Dr. Dave Evans has completed his report, but says he cannot release the results until the police investigation is complete.

Panfilova’s husband Ruslan has not been charged criminally but is named as a defendant alongside Panfilova and Rabadanova in a separate trial for breaking the Day Nurseries Act.

According to that Act, in force in 2013, unlicensed daycares could look after only five children under 10 who aren’t members of the operator’s family. In December 2014, that law was replaced with the Child Care and Early Years Act, which increases penalties for overcrowding and imposes a hard cap of five kids including relatives of the operator, but many of these regulations won’t kick in until next year.

A Newmarket judge ruled in March that the Ravikoviches’ lawsuit can proceed, after the province attempted to have it thrown out by arguing it had no responsibility for Eva since she died in an unlicensed daycare.

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In January 2014, Panfilova sold the house where Eva died for $495,000.

With files from Brennan Doherty and Laurie Monsebraaten

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