Hema Upadhyaya murder case: Police arrest three persons who were detained earlier

Mumbai: Even as hunt is on for a key suspect in the double murder case of artist Hema Upadhyaya and her lawyer, the Mumbai police on Tuesday arrested the three persons detained earlier and booked them for murder.

The fourth suspect, arrested in Varanasi on Monday, will be brought to the city soon and produced before the court and police will seek his remand.

The three suspects - Azad Rajbhar, Pradeep Rajbhar and Vijay Rajbhar - arrested by Mumbai police were booked under IPC sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), Deputy Commissioner of Police Vikram Deshmane told reporters here.

They are in the business of manufacturing and selling fibre glass used by Hema and her estranged husband and artist Chintan Upadhyaya for their installations.

They were produced in a local court which remanded them in police custody till 19 December, Deshmane said.

Bodies of Hema Upadhyaya (43) and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani (65) packed in cardboard boxes were found in a drain in Kandivali on Saturday last.

Shivkumar Rajbhar alias Sadhu, who was picked up from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on Monday and currently under transit remand, will be brought to Mumbai at the earliest, Deshmane said.

Refusing to divulge further details, he said investigations were on into the case.

Based on the leads provided by the three during their sustained questioning, teams of Mumbai Police have been dispatched to various locations outside Maharashtra to track down and nab the key accused, Vidyadhar Rajbhar, who used to make the material required by Hema for her work.

Meanwhile, Vijay Rajbhar’s wife Saroj Rajbhar, who came to Kandivali police station along with her children, claimed before mediapersons that her husband was innocent.

“My husband is innocent. He is being falsely implicated. He was just ferrying the transport vehicle (in which the cardboard boxes stuffed with the bodies of Hema and Bhambhani were kept) and was unaware of the content in the boxes.”

According to police, Vidyadhar, Sadhu and the three arrested persons allegedly killed Hema and Bhambhani on Saturday last.

Police had earlier said the arrest of Vidyadhar, a resident of Shamsi Housing Society in suburban Kandivali, would shed light on whether the murder was a fallout of a financial dispute between him and Hema, or whether it was a contract killing with some other motive.

The police have sealed Vidyadhar’s warehouse in Kandivali.

According to police, on Saturday night, the day they were believed to have been killed, Vidyadhar had called Hema on her mobile at around 7.30 pm.

A hunt was launched for Vidyadhar soon after detention of Sadhu by the UP Special Task Force in Varanasi on Monday following a request by Mumbai police.

Sadhu had gone public with the claim that the two were killed under instructions from Vidyadhar.

Hema, a Baroda-born painter and installation artist, was locked in bitter divorce proceedings with her husband, Chintan.

She had in 2013 filed a case against him alleging that he painted obscene pictures of women on the walls of their matrimonial home in Mumbai to harass her. Bhambhani had represented Hema in this case.

PTI