Artist Chintan Upadhyay convicted for abetting and conspiring in wife's murder

A sessions court here on Thursday convicted artist Chintan Upadhyay for abetting and conspiring to kill his wife wife Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer Haresh Bhambhani.

Vijay Rajbhar, Pradeep Rajbhar, Shivkumar Rajbhar, and Azad Rajbhar, the other four defendants, were found guilty of murder. On December 11, 2015, Hema Upadhyay and Bhambhani were murdered, and their bodies—stuffed inside cardboard boxes—were later discovered in a ditch in Mumbai's Kandivali area.

Additional Sessions Judge S Y Bhosale, of the court in suburban Dindoshi, held Upadhyay guilty of abetting and conspiring to kill his wife and her lawyer. The court will hear arguments on the quantum of sentence on Saturday.

The prosecution, in its final submission, argued that Chintan Upadhyay was the “pioneer of the conspiracy” to murder his wife and her lawyer. Chintan was driven by “hatred” towards the duo, special prosecutor Vaibhav Bagade alleged. Bagade said he would seek maximum punishment for the convicts.

Chintan was arrested soon after the incident for conspiring to eliminate his wife. He spent nearly six years in jail before being granted bail by the Supreme court in September 2021. In his final statement submitted before the court, Chintan had claimed the police were unable to crack the double murder and hence implicated him in a false case taking advantage of his and Hema’s matrimonial dispute.