The Bombay High Court on Wednesday issued a notice to the Maharashtra government and the Mumbai police in an appeal by artist Chintan Upadhyay against his conviction for abetting and conspiring the murder of his estranged wife, artist Hema Upadhyay. hintan was sentenced to life imprisonment by the sessions court on October 10, which he has challenged before the High Court. He has also filed an interim application, seeking release on bail, pending his appeal. Additional Public Prosecutor J P Yagnik for the state government has sought time to go through the evidence, and take instructions from officials concerned and respond to the plea thereafter. A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Gauri V Godse was hearing Chintan's plea, which claimed that the trial court convicted him based only on the confession of his co-accused Pradeep Rajbhar. The plea also mentions that while the trial court concluded that the other co-accused had no independent motive to kill Hema, and hence Chintan was involved in the conspiracy, there could not be an inference to convict him. Chintan has claimed that the court had observed that it could not rely on sketches and paintings made by Chintan to show that he was involved. He has submitted that the confession was retracted by his co-accused Pradeep, and the court should not rely on it solely in such a case as only circumstantial evidence was not permissible under the law. The High Court has kept the next hearing in Chintan's plea two weeks later. On December 11, 2015, the bodies of Hema and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani were found dumped in a nullah in Kandivali. The Dindoshi sessions court had found Chintan guilty of abetting and conspiring the murder of Hema, with three others — Pradeep, Vijay, and Shivkumar — guilty of killing Hema and Bhambhani, along with other charges. Chintan, who has spent six years in jail since his arrest in 2015, was granted bail by the Supreme Court in 2021. Following his conviction, Chintan was arrested and sent to jail again.
