Mumbai: Holding that the conduct of an accused before and after the incident needs to be considered while deciding on bail application, Bombay high court on Thursday rejected the bail plea of artist Chintan Upadhyay in connection with murder of his former wife Hema and her lawyer Haresh Bhambani.
Justice Sadhana Jadhav while refusing to grant bail to Chintan observed that the investigating agency had recovered Chintan’s diary from his house where he had expressed grievance against Hema, her brother, and other members of her family, and written that if given a chance, he would destroy them. The judge also took into consideration call data records provided by police which showed that Chintan had called Hema’s servant and Bhambani’s daughter several times after the incident to enquire whether they returned home or not.
However, Chintan’s lawyer Raja Thakre argued that Hema had gone missing and her servant had called Chintan several times to enquire about her whereabouts however Chintan could not receive those calls and missed call information did not show in the call data records. Advocate Thakre said that later, Chintan called Hema’s servant and when he came to know that she had gone missing, he called a few times to check if she had come back or not.
The judge was not satisfied with this and observed that prima facie, a case had been made out to conduct trial against Chintan. Whatever claims Chintan had made including the fact that co-accused Pradeep Rajbhar retracted his confessional statement where he said he committed the crime at the instance of Chintan would have to be proved during the trial.
The judge also relied on the extra judicial confession of absconding accused Vidyadhar Rajbhar’s mother who in her statement said that on the day of the incident, her son called her up informing that he had killed Hema and her lawyer at the instance of Chintan and he was then going to surrender to police. The judge noted that no mother would utter such a thing to falsely implicate her own son.
