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TBILISI: Georgia on Tuesday jailed prominent opposition figure Nika Gvaramia for eight months, the latest in a wave of arrests targeting politicians, activists, and journalists critical of the ruling party.
The EU candidate nation has been gripped by political unrest since the disputed parliamentary elections last October, when the ruling Georgian Dream party declared victory, sparking mass protests.
Demonstrators accuse the ruling party, which shelved EU membership talks, of veering toward authoritarian rule and steering the country closer to Moscow — accusations the government rejects.
On Tuesday, a Tbilisi court sentenced Gvaramia — the co-leader of the key opposition Akhali party — to eight months in prison and barred him from holding public office for two years, his lawyer Dito Sadzaglishvili told AFP.
“The verdict is unlawful and part of the government’s attempt to crush all dissent in Georgia,” he said.
Gvaramia was sentenced for refusing to cooperate with a parliamentary commission investigating alleged abuses under imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili.
Nearly all of Georgia’s opposition leaders have been jailed this month on similar charges.
Saakashvili, a pro-Western reformer, is currently serving a 12-and-a-half-year prison term on charges widely denounced by rights groups as politically driven.
Opposition figures have rejected the commission’s legitimacy, accusing the ruling Georgian Dream party of using it as a tool to suppress dissent.
Amnesty International said last week that the “disputed” commission “has been instrumentalized to target former public officials for their principled opposition.”
Ahead of last year’s elections, Georgian Dream announced plans to outlaw all major opposition parties.
Brussels has said Georgia’s democratic backsliding derails it from its longstanding EU membership bid enshrined in the country’s constitution and supported — according to opinion polls — by some 80 percent of the population.
The United States and several European countries have imposed sanctions on some Georgian Dream officials.

HYDERABAD, India: The death toll from the explosion and fire at Sigachi Industries’ chemical factory in southern India has risen to at least 39, officials said on Tuesday, forcing the supplier of pharma products to shut operations for 90 days.

The government of Telangana state, where the facility is located, has formed a five-member committee to probe the incident, the cause of which is yet to be disclosed by the company. The explosion on Monday also injured 34, according to officials.

“We are still clearing the debris,” GV Narayana Rao, director of the Telangana fire disaster response service, told Reuters, adding that the building had completely collapsed.

“Once we are all done with the clearing, only then we will be able to assess if any other body is still remaining under the debris or if it is all clear,” Rao said.

Police officials said more than 140 people were working in the plant when the incident occurred. Twenty-five of the deceased were yet to be identified, district administrative official P. Pravinya said.

“I came out (of the plant) to use the restroom and heard a loud blast. It sounded like a bomb blast. I came out and saw fire. A part of the fire also spread toward me. I jumped the wall and escaped,” Chandan Gound, 32, who has been working at the factory for six months, told Reuters by phone.

“Many of them (those inside) managed to escape, but a large number were trapped and could not come out,” Gound added.

Sigachi, which makes microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), caters to clients in the pharma, food, cosmetic and specialty chemicals sectors in countries ranging from the US to Australia.

MCC’s compressibility, binding properties, and ability to boost drug release make it a vital ingredient in pharmaceutical manufacturing. It is also used to prevent the formation of lumps in food products, to maintain texture of cosmetic products, and as a fat substitute in low-calorie foods.

Sigachi’s Telangana plant contributes a little over a fourth of its total capacity of 21,700 million metric tons per annum.

Its shares dropped about 8 percent on Tuesday and were headed for their sharpest two-day drop on record.

Sigachi halted operations at the plant for 90 days from Monday citing damage to equipment and structures. The plant is fully insured and the company is initiating claims.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, five people were killed and four others injured in a massive fire at a crackers factory in the Sivakasi manufacturing cluster in the southern Tamil Nadu state, a fire department official said. The incident is the latest in a series of fire accidents in the area.