A Mumbai sessions court has found artist Chintan Upadhyay guilty on charges of abetting and conspiring the murders of his estranged wife, artist Hema Upadhyay, and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani in 2015.
Chintan has been found guilty under Section 109 read with 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for abetting and conspiring the murders of Hema and her lawyer, Live Law reported.
In addition to this, three more accused were found guilty on charges of murder under Section 302 of the IPC.
Also Read: Delhi Police again calls journalist Abhisar Sharma for interrogation in UAPA case
The court will hear the accused on the quantum of punishment on Saturday.
Chintan was out on bail since 2021 while the three other accused – Vijay Rajbhar, Pradeep Rajbhar and Shivkumar Rajbhar – were in custody. The court has directed for Chintan to be taken into custody now.
Hema and Bhambhani had gone missing on December 11, 2015. The next day, a scrap collector alerted the police that two suspicious-looking cardboard boxes wrapped in white plastic were seen floating in a nullah in the northern suburb of Kandivali. The bodies of Hema and Bhambhani were found dumped in the boxes. Ten days later, the Mumbai police arrested Chintan claiming that the murders were done by the co-accused at his behest over his strained relationship with Hema.
The 50-year-old artist was granted bail in September 2021, after spending nearly six years in jail since his arrest.
Chintan, through his lawyers Raja Thakare and Bharat Manghani, had submitted that there was no evidence to link him to the murders. They had submitted that Chintan was in Delhi when the murders took place and that he had no motive to commit the crime as their matrimonial dispute had been over after the family court granted them divorce in October 2014.
The police had claimed Chintan was in Mumbai between December 1 to 8, 2015, to attend a court hearing and was staying at the common residence shared by Hema and him in Juhu. While leaving, Chintan said “goodbye” to Hema thrice and had uploaded the song ‘Alvida’ on his Facebook page, the police said. The police had also claimed that he had made a sketch of Hema with ‘I will destroy you’ written on it. The police had claimed that these showed that Chintan was linked to the murders, Indian Express reported.
Also Read: ‘Working under threat…’: Press bodies write to CJI after NewsClick raids
It was alleged that Chintan had hatched a conspiracy with absconding accused Vidyadhar Rajbhar, a fabricator, who was employed by both Hema and him previously for making their artwork. Vidyadhar remains absconding to date. The police were also relying on a confession given in 2016 by co-accused Pradeep Rajbhar, which he retracted subsequently saying he had done it under pressure from the police.
Chintan, in his defence, had said that their separation had been in process since 2009 and by 2015, the permanent alimony was already paid to her by him, so there was no reason for him to plan to murder her at that stage. The police had claimed that Vidyadhar had hired the other accused and lured Hema and Bhambhani to his workshop in Kandivali, where they were then smothered to death.