Hema Upadhyay murder: Court rejects Chintan Upadhyay’s discharge plea

THE DINDOSHI sessions court has rejected the discharge application filed by artist Chintan Upadhyay, arrested for the murder of his wife Hema and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani. Chintan had filed the discharge application in July, claiming his creative language could not be misinterpreted to prove criminal intent. He claimed there was no “legally admissible” evidence against him and that the police were relying on “insufficient circumstantial evidence”.

Chintan claimed entries made by him in his personal diary between 2012 and 2014 had been “randomly selected and read out of context”. He said the police had relied on the statement of Bhambhani’s wife Poonam that a picture was drawn by him with the words “I will destroy you”, which was shown to her by Hema. Chintan claimed the police had not recovered the alleged picture. Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam has argued there was enough prima facie evidence to show his involvement in hatching a conspiracy to commit the murders.