After 5-day search 23-year-old girl found dead in her car
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Thursday, July 23
23-year-old Tamar Bachaliashvili from Ponichala district of Tbilisi, who went missing on July 18th, has been found dead in her car in a forest of Tetritskaro municipality of eastern Georgia earlier on 22nd of July. Bachaliashvili was missing for several days, she left the house with her car on Saturday and had not returned since.
According to the relatives, the deceased has no relatives or friends in Tetritskaro district. Therefore, they do not understand why 23-year-old Tamar Bachaliashvili would go to the area.
The girl was found by a local shepherd in the forest and called the police. Witnesses told the media that the body was in the back-seat of the car.
The family of Bachaliashvili says that “suicide is ruled out, our daughter has been killed.”
The body of the girl has been transported for autopsy. The family says that they will invite an independent expert to get involved in the investigation.
The mother of the deceased girl told Mtavari Arkhi earlier this week that she did not know where her daughter worked, while her father said his “daughter was frequently nervous and irritated due to her job.”
“My daughter is in IT. She graduated from the faculty of cybertechology (in France). She just told me that she received orders from Canada. She said it was an IT company she worked for, but she herself had not much information about it,” the mother said, adding that the company allegedly had no office, but her daughter used to go to Vake, central Tbilisi, for job-related issues.
According to the father, yesterday, the law enforcers told him that they opened his daughter’s computer, finding that the girl “was facing a big problem.”
A few hours before the deceased was found, a statement was issued by the company about where Tamar worked. The statement said that the disappearance of the employee is inexplicable. It is also explained that a young woman who was a programmer by profession recently worked on creating an online system for company employees where employees could count working hours.
The company Bachaliashvili worked for is IT company Zag which was created 5 years ago. Tamar Koberidze, the company director, told the media that they “are working exclusively for the US.” “That is why we have no website or PR,” Koberidze said. The company says that Bachaliashvili joined their team in 2017 and requested dismissal last week.
Koberidze says that she was not surprised by Bachaliashvili’s decision as “it was hard for her to study and work simultaneously (Bachaliashvili enrolled at Tbilisi State University French School of Informatics in 2016).
Zag Ltd denies the information to the media that there may be a connection between them and the so-called Troll Factory, however, its director says there has been talk of the existence of such a facility in the same building where the company has an office.
What was Tamar’s second job, neither her Georgian employer nor her family specified, professional social network linkedin reveals that she worked with the Austrian IT company SPRYFLASH.
Tamar Bachaliashvili’s family lawyer Mikheil Ramishvili informed that letters, medicines and other personal items were seized from the car. He does not speak about the contents of the letters found in the girl’s car, However, according to some media outlets, a letter which was found in the car, said - “There is money on the deposit, use it.” As for medicines, Ramishvili reports, they were not psychotropic drugs. According to him, the deceased also had personal belongings in the car, including a mobile phone. Asked if there were any traces of another car on the spot, the lawyer said that all traces have been taken and everything is possible. The lawyer does not rule out that the car may have been newly brought to the scene.
The involvement of divers and helicopters in Tamar Bachaliashvili's search was preceded by a protest by family members demanding that law enforcement make more efforts to find the missing person. Mtavari Arkhi reported on 21st of July that the family and relatives of Bachaliashvili tried to block the road and held a rally in Kvemo Ponichala settlement, demanding more attention to the case. Father of Tamar Bachaliashvili has accused police of being indifferent.
