en days after the brutal murder of artist Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani in Kandivali, the police arrested her husband Chintan in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The police said the ongoing alimony battle between the artist couple led to Chintan plotting Hema’s murder, a plan he hatched in collusion with the absconding accused, Vidyadhar Rajbhar, over a period of two to three months.
Chintan, who has been in Mumbai since December 13, was questioned by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch every day till Sunday. On Monday evening, the investigating team asked him to come to the police station. The police told him that they needed to clear some aspects of the investigation that had come to light during the interrogation of the four arrested accused.
Chintan reached the police station late on Monday evening with four or five of his friends, all of them from the art fraternity. He was questioned till the early hours of Tuesday morning. Finally, around 3:30 am on Tuesday, the police placed Chintan under arrest.
“Chintan was arrested after being questioned on Tuesday morning. A conspiracy has transpired in the offence and we have added Sections 120 B [criminal conspiracy] and 109 [abetment] in the case. We are still in the initial stages of inquiry,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police Vikram Deshmane, Zone XI.
‘Complicated case’Chintan was produced before the 17 Metropolitan Magistrate’s court in Borivali on Tuesday afternoon. Terming it a “complicated case,” the police told the court they had to probe whether the bitter divorce battle between Chintan and Hema was a motive for the murder. Chintan was remanded in police custody till January 1, 2016, while the other four accused were remanded till December 28.
Officials closely involved with the investigation said that Chintan maintained that he was innocent for several hours during the questioning, claiming that he had no idea what Vidyadhar and his accomplices were planning, till the investigating team confronted him with the discrepancies that were drawn up after the Crime Branch and the Kandivali police compared notes on Monday.
Sources revealed that the Crime Branch and the Kandivali police had acted in coordination and were comparing notes regularly, which made it easier to pinpoint the discrepancies in Chintan’s statements.
‘He was angry’“Chintan was angry over Hema’s appeal against the divorce and the simultaneous demand for alimony. He met Vidyadhar in various places in and around Mumbai and also communicated with him with a couple of people acting as middlemen to ferry messages, which indicates a well thought out conspiracy,” said a senior officer.
In the last hearing, the Bombay High Court had directed Chintan to pay Rs 4 lakh to Hema. He had made the first payment of Rs 2 lakh to her lawyer Bhambhani a day before the two were murdered.
Another officer said it was highly likely that Chintan was helped in hatching the plan. “It is difficult to believe that Chintan plotted the murder all by himself, and we suspect that one more person helped,” said the officer.
Investigations so far have also found out that Chintan had promised to pay up to Rs 10 lakh to Vidyadhar and his co-accused for the murder, the police said.
