June 2, 2026 - The South Caucasus News - SouthCaucasusNews.com

Three more prison sentences were handed down in separate June 1 and June 2 rulings against minors in connection with the murder of 28-year-old teacher Giga Avaliani, with charges including preparation of infliction of an intentional serious harm to health as a group, failure to report a crime, and giving false testimony.

The verdicts bring the total number of convicted minors in the high-profile case to five. The jail terms of all convicts in the case were reduced automatically by one-fourth under the juvenile justice code.

Tbilisi City Court judge Demetre Jinjolia announced the sentences in cases of Demetre Chikovani and Ana Naskidashvili on June 2, about a week after delivering guilty verdicts on May 27.

Chikovani, already convicted on separate violence-related charges, was found guilty on May 27 of preparation of infliction of an intentional serious harm to health as a group under Article 117-3-k, and sentenced on June 2 to 13 years in prison, reduced to 9 years and 9 months. Naskidashvili was found guilty on May 27 of failure to report a particularly serious crime under Article 376-2 of the Criminal Code, and was sentenced to 7 years in prison on June 2, with the sentence reduced to five years and three months.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia, “on October 1, 2025, according to a plan devised by Aleksandre Gabashvili, Giorgi Rikadze, and Demetre Chikovani, Aleksandre Gabashvili and Giorgi Rikadze, as a group, attacked Giga Avaliani, who sustained severe bodily injuries and, as a result, died in a medical facility on October 24, 2025.”

Prosecutors said that while Naskidashvili was aware “that a serious crime was being prepared and had been committed, she did not report this to law enforcement authorities.”

In a separate ruling on June 1, the court found another minor guilty of giving false testimony to a court and sentenced them to four years of imprisonment, reduced to three years. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the defendant obstructed justice by knowingly providing false testimony while appearing as a witness during a March 24 hearing at Tbilisi City Court in the case concerning Avaliani’s death and related group violence charges. The prosecutors did not provide the name of the convict.

The verdicts follow earlier rulings from April, sentencing two minors – Aleksandre Gabashvili and Giorgi Rikadze, main defendants in the case – to multi-year prison terms on charges of intentional infliction of serious harm to health resulting in death as a group in the case of Avaliani, but also on four separate group violence incidents that involved identifying “unacceptable” persons and physically assaulting them. Chikovani was also convicted in the latter case and sentenced to nine years in prison, to serve six years and nine months after a reduced sentence.

The Avaliani Case

The 28-year-old tutor Giga Avaliani was attacked near his apartment building in Tbilisi on October 1, 2025, sustaining critical head injuries. He remained in a coma for more than three weeks before dying in hospital on October 24.

The convictions follow months of public pressure from Avaliani’s mother, Eka Kupatadze, who repeatedly criticized the investigation and called for accountability for everyone involved in the attack, including individuals who allegedly knew about the planned assault but failed to alert law enforcement authorities. The family also demanded that the case be investigated as a group crime.

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