Tolokonnikova moved from remote penal colony where she is serving two-year sentence after experiencing severe headaches

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

The Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been transferred from the women's penal colony where she is serving her two-year sentence to a nearby prison hospital after experiencing severe headaches.

Tolokonnikova, 22, was moved to the remote colony IK-14 in October following her conviction for inciting religious hatred during Pussy Riot's performance of an anti-Putin "punk prayer" in the capital's Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

"The penal colony she is in is a hard one," bandmate Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was freed on appeal after the trial, told the Guardian. "She works in two shifts … and has no time to relax."

Tolokonnikova underwent a special medical investigation in December that concluded the reasons for her headaches, which she has complained of since her trial, could be "very serious", her lawyer Irina Khrunova said in a statement.

She was moved to hospital on 24 January after an official appeal to the prison director.

Inmates in female prison colonies are required to do daily work, sleep in large barracks with up to 200 others and follow a strict routine beginning at 6am.

Tolokonnikova was exhausted by the extra evening chores she was given in addition to the eight hours she spends every day sewing uniforms for the Russian security services, Samutsevich said.

The penal colonies inhabited by Tolokonnikova and her fellow Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina, 24, do not differ significantly from the gulags of the Soviet Union, said Alexander Rimmer, a human rights activist who spent four years in Russian prisons.

The regime inside them can be "sadistic", he said. Unlike in pre-trial detention centres, you are always dressed in prison uniform and "only your underwear is your own".

Prison authorities are, however, likely to take special care of celebrity prisoners. "They are probably very frightened of something happening to Tolokonnikova," Rimmer said. "There would be a big scandal."