Three former employees of the Interior Ministry have been arrested on allegations of providing false information and abuse of official authority in connection with the 2024 death of 23-year-old altar server Temur Khaduri, the Prosecutor’s Office said on November 11.
The arrest follows longtime calls for investigation by Khaduri’s family, who suspected that police officers may have killed him during the pursuit operation after the man threw stones at a police car. The young man’s body was found near the village of Simoneti in Terjola Municipality, western Georgian Imereti region, in August 2024, three days after he went missing.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, two of the detainees are charged with providing false information, while the third faces charges of providing false information and abuse of official powers. The alleged offenses carry a prison sentence of up to six years.
The agency said that on August 25, Khaduri damaged several vehicles by throwing stones at them on the central highway near the turn-off to Simoneti, including a police vehicle driven by the deputy head of the Tkibuli Police Department. Following a report of the incident, the deputy head of the Terjola Police Division and an investigator arrived at the scene.
The Prosecutor’s Office said that police officers attempted to detain Khaduri, but he disobeyed their orders and fled. During the pursuit, officers fired three shots into the air, but failed to apprehend him, according to the statement.
The investigation found that the officers subsequently withheld information about the attempted detention, the pursuit, and the gunshots from their interview records, allegedly to avoid possible disciplinary and other legal consequences. The Prosecutor’s Office said this prevented the case from being transferred to another investigative body and substantially hindered the administration of justice.
It also said that the investigator who had been present during the police operation knowingly entered false information into the interview record of a witness, thereby undermining the public interest in a full and objective investigation.
The arrests were initially announced by the family’s lawyer, Ledi Tukvadze. “After two years of tireless work, Terjola police officers have been arrested in the Temur Khaduri case,” she wrote on social media, thanking the Prosecutor General’s Office and investigative journalists, particularly opposition-leaning TV Pirveli channel’s Nodar Meladze and his team, for their work on the case.
TV Pirveli’s investigative report aired in March 2025 said that Khaduri’s body was found in the Chachkhura riverbed near Simoneti village on August 28, three days after he went missing as he travelled from Tbilisi to Kutaisi.
Khaduri’s family has alleged from the outset that police officers were responsible for his death and called for a renewed investigation and accountability.
According to TV Pirveli, the forensic examination was unable to establish the cause or exact time of Khaduri’s death. However, it found bruising around both eye sockets and on his eyelids, which the examination concluded had been caused by the impact of a blunt object several minutes before his death, while he was still alive. His mother, Nino Gvishiani, suspects that police officers severely beat her son and subsequently dumped his body in the river.
TV Pirveli had also obtained surveillance footage from a farm near Simoneti, which reportedly showed a Terjola police pickup arriving at an uninhabited area at 22:28 on August 25. The footage showed officers searching the area with flashlights before leaving approximately six minutes later. The location was around 300 metres from the river where Khaduri’s body was later discovered, according to the report.
The family has also questioned the conduct of the police investigation, alleging that officers initially concealed the pursuit. TV Pirveli’s report also said that surveillance footage from cameras at the Nakshirghele police station, which could have recorded the operation, had disappeared.
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