Artist Chintan Upadhyay gets life in prison in estranged wife’s murder case

Additional sessions judge SY Bhosale pronounced the quantum of sentence five days after finding Chintan Upadhyay, Shiv Kumar Rajbhar, Pradip Kumar Rajbhar, and Vijay Kumar Rajbhar guilty

A sessions court in Mumbai on Tuesday sentenced artist Chintan Upadhyay to life imprisonment in the case related to the murder of his estranged wife Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani.

Artist Chintan Upadhyay. (Hindustan Times)

Additional sessions judge SY Bhosale rejected the prosecution’s plea for the death sentence to Chintan Upadhyay and three other convicts Shiv Kumar Rajbhar, Pradip Kumar Rajbhar, and Vijay Kumar Rajbhar. The four were found guilty on Thursday.

The prosecution said Hema Upadhyay, one of India’s leading artists, and Bhambhani were smothered in December 2015 before their bodies were packed in cardboard boxes and dumped. A garbage collector discovered the bodies and alerted the police.

The investigation found that Vidyadhar Rajbhar, who remains at large, used his employees and contacts to get the two killed. Pradip Kumar Rajbhar made a confessional statement before a metropolitan magistrate in March 2016 about Chintan Upadhyay’s role in the murder. The prosecution relied on the statement as well as Chintan Upadhyay’s paintings and sketches depicting hatred towards his estranged wife and his diary reflecting these feelings.

Chintan Upadhyay denied the charges claiming he was made a scapegoat. His lawyers Raja Thakare and Bharat Manghani argued their client had no reason to kill his estranged wife as his divorce plea was granted and that he paid a major chunk of maintenance. They insisted there was no evidence of the conspiracy meeting and his role in the murders.

The lawyers for the other accused, Anil Jadhav and Hassan Ali Mooman, questioned the admissibility of Pradip Kumar Rajbhar’s statement, saying it was involuntary and he also retracted. The defence lawyers questioned the call data records, which the prosecution also presented as evidence.