Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a jailed Pussy Riot punk-band's member, has been hospitalized in a serious condition after 5 days of hunger strike, her husband Pyotr Verzilov said in his Twitter. The hospitalization also took place hours after it was announced that her prison transfer request had been denied.

      Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, serving a two-year sentence over a so-called punk prayer protest in Moscow’s main cathedral last year, has been placed in the medical ward of her Mordovian penal colony “on doctors’ orders,” the penitentiary service told Russian press.

      Tolokonnikova, 23, announced her hunger strike earlier this week. In an open letter published by news site Lenta.ru, she harshly criticized the prison’s labor and sanitary conditions and claimed that a vice warden had threatened her life.

      Her lawyer, Dmitry Dinze, said Friday that a request for Tolokonnikova to be transferred to a different prison had been denied. That same day a local official announced that the prison did not support her request for early release, an issue to later be decided in court. Tolokonnikova's husband also reports a guard took away Tolokonnikova’s drinking water, the only sustenance she had allowed herself on her hunger strike, and also allegedly grabbed her by the arms without letting go.

      A penitentiary service representative denied those claims on Friday, telling the press that doctors had recommended that Tolokonnikova’s water simply be changed to warm water, and that physical force had not been used against her.