A man in Tbilisi has confessed to murdering his partner on 25 April. Mother of four Miranda Vacheshvili, 39, was found dead in Gldani District, strangled with a wire, a day after she was reported missing. According to police, she had sustained injuries to her face.

Her partner, Giorgi Janiashvili, 42, confessed to the murder after being arrested.

The court remanded Janiashvili in custody, however his lawyer, Soso Joglidze, has protested the decision, as he claims his client has a mental disorder.

The couple’s daughter, Nino Khosroshvili, told journalists that her father was often violent towards her mother, and that her mother would call the police each time but this never resulted in any action.

After police issued a restraining order against Janiashvili, he attempted to burn down the house of his partner’s friend, where she was staying with her children.

Janiashvili’s lawyer has not denied this, saying, ‘my client’s mother spoke with me and I know for sure that he really did attempt to burn down that house’.

Mikheil Chkheidze, prosecuting the case, claims that Janiashvili was in court after the attempted arson, but was released after receiving only a verbal warning.

Nino Khosroshvili says that her mother lived in fear because her partner threatened to kill her.

‘Once I even saw him beating mother while she was pregnant. She was afraid to buy food for her child, because she had to go outside. She knew that her partner could dare to do a lot. If the police were more attentive, my mother would be alive now’, she told journalists.

The couple had four children together, three of them are minors.

‘I spoke with my son. He told me he killed her by accident. He said he was drunk. He called the police himself telling them what he had done, and that he wanted to surrender’, Janiashvili’s mother said, adding that the couple weren’t actually married.

Janiashvili has been charged with premeditated murder, which is punishable by 7–15 years in prison.

‘No preventative measures’

Femicide has come under increased attention in Georgia, after a number of such cases gained publicity. On 4 April 2017 a husband allegedly murdered his wife after becoming jealous. Neighbours found her body strangled with a rope.

A similar murder took place on 8 April 2017 in Aspindza, Samtskhe-Javakheti.

Georgia’s Public Defender, has criticised the government for failing to protect women from abusive partners. In his annual human rights report for 2016 he wrote that the state doesn’t have a standard approach to evaluating risks and avoiding repeat offences. ‘There is no recorded statistic of these cases to analyse them and organise preventive measures based on this data’, he remarked.