OVER A year after artist Chintan Upadhyay was arrested for allegedly murdering his wife and her lawyer, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch Tuesday sought permission from court to question him to access a phone seized from him. Officers from the Crime Branch told the court that at the time of Upadhyay’s arrest, an Apple phone with a SIM card had been seized from him. Upadhyay was arrested in 2015 for the alleged murder of his wife Hema and her lawyer, Haresh Bhambhani. The phone had been sent to the Kalina Forensic State Laboratory (FSL) for tests and the centre has stated that the device is password protected. The FSL officials have sought its password to access the data stored in the phone. In their plea before the court seeking permission to question Upadhyay about the password, the Crime Branch has claimed that there is a possibility of finding evidence relevant to the case on the phone. Additional sessions judge D S Shinde has allowed the application granting the investigators to take his custody ‘in the interest of investigation’. Advocates Raja Thackeray and Bharat Manghani representing Upadhyay filed his objection to the plea stating that neither a copy of the application was given to Upadhyay nor his say sought before allowing the application. “It is a matter of right that the accused person should be given a copy of any application which is preferred against him and sufficient time should be granted to the accused to provide a reply for the same,” his application states. He has also sought a stay on the matter which was not permitted by the court, while it took the objection on record.
