Artist Chintan Upadhyay has been found guilty of conspiring to kill his estranged wife Hema Upadhyay
Mumbai:
A sessions court on Thursday found artist Chintan Upadhyay guilty of conspiring to kill his estranged wife Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer Haresh Bhambhani and being an accomplice in the murder.
Judge SY Bhosale of the Dindoshi court will hear arguments on the quantum of punishment on Saturday.
Three other accused, namely Vijay Rajbhar, Pradeep Rajbhar and Shivkumar Rajbhar, were convicted of murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and other relevant offences.
The prosecutor said it will seek the maximum death penalty for all those convicted.
Upadhyay was held guilty under IPC sections 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) and 109 (sedition). After the conviction, Chintan Upadhyay, who was out on bail, was sent to judicial custody till Saturday.
Special Prosecutor Vaibhav Bagade told the media that he will seek the death penalty as one of the victims, Haresh Bhambhani, was a lawyer.
Given the recent cases of assault on lawyers, the crime falls into the “rare” category, and the consequences of such incidents for the entire justice system must be considered, he added.
Bhambhani’s brothers Ramesh and Gopi Bhambhani said they wanted death penalty for the convicts. “The family members suffered, his wife and two daughters suffered. Since his death, we have not celebrated Diwali and Holi to this day,” they told reporters.
The Public Prosecution Service interviewed approximately fifty witnesses during the trial. Chintan Upadhyay was the “pioneer of the conspiracy” to kill his wife Hema, an installation artist, and her lawyer as Chintan was “driven by hatred towards the duo”, prosecutor Bagade had argued.
A complete set of circumstances was proven against all suspects, the prosecution had alleged.
Hema Upadhyay and lawyer Bhambhani were murdered on December 11, 2015 and the bodies were stuffed into cardboard boxes and thrown into a ditch in suburban Kandivali.
Vidyadhar Rajbhar, who is accused of committing the murders, has gone into hiding.
Chintan Upadhyay was arrested soon after the murders for allegedly plotting to eliminate his wife. He spent almost six years in jail before being released on bail by the Supreme Court in September 2021.
The police were unable to solve the double murder and therefore implicated him in a false case, taking advantage of the marital dispute between him and Hema, Chintan alleged in this final statement submitted to the court.
Chintan had no reason to eliminate his wife and police extracted co-accused Pradeep Rajbhar’s confession about the conspiracy through coercion, the defense had alleged.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
