Mumbai police make headway in double murder

Mumbai: Mumbai police have arrested two suspects from Uttar Pradesh in the murder of contemporary artist Hema Upadhyay, 43, and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani, 65. Four other men have also been detained.

A police team had earlier tipped off their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh and gone to Varanasi on suspicion that the culprits have taken shelter there.

The Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh detained the main suspect, Sadhu Rajbhar, who had called up the artist to meet her saying he had some fresh evidence against her estranged husband Chintan Upadhyay, also an artist.

Rajbhar is being questioned as he was the last person to talk to Hema on Friday evening.

Criminal lawyer Bhambhani, who lived in King’s Circle in central Mumbai, with his wife and daughter, had left home at 6.30pm on Friday and later told his daughter that he was with Hema discussing a case.

Their bodies, stuffed in cardboard boxes and wrapped plastic, were first spotted in a drain in the suburb of Kandivili West by a municipal worker who alerted the police on Saturday evening. When the boxes were opened, police found Bhambhani was gagged and his hands tied behind his back while Hema’s hands were also behind her back but not tied. The duo could have been strangulated. However, autopsy reports are awaited.

“As per our probe, their bodies were transported in a tempo [van] from suburban Juhu to Kandivili (West),” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection) Dhananjay Kulkarni on Monday. The transporter told police that he dumped two boxes in a Kandivili drain on Saturday afternoon assuming that it contained broken antiques.

The police registered a murder case under Sections 302 of the Indian Penal Code against unknown persons. Suspicion is also centred around the owner of a warehouse where the painter, also an installation artist, had stored her artwork due to a dispute over money.

Hema and her estranged husband, whom she had married in 1998, were locked in a bitter divorce battle since 2010, and in 2013 Bhambhani had represented Hema in a case after she filed harassment complaints against her husband. She had also alleged that he painted obscene sketches on the walls in her Juhu flat.

The Vadodara-born artist was a recipient of prestigious awards from the Lalit Kala Akademi and Gujarat State Lalit Kala Akademi and has exhibited her works in India and abroad.