The Borivali Metropolitan Magistrate court on Monday decided to send the four accused in the Hema Upadhyay murder case — Vijay Rajbhar, Pradeep Rajbhar, Azad Rajbhar and Shiv Kumar Rajbhar aka Sadhu — to judicial custody for 14 days.
The Mumbai police arrested Hema’s estranged husband Chintan Upadhyay earlier this month in connection with the murder of his wife and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani. The bodies of Hema and her lawyer, wrapped in plastic sheets, were found inside cardboard cartons dumped in a sewer in Kandivali on December 12. While Chintan will appear in court on January 1, he was first produced in court on December 22.
Earlier, when the accused were produced in court, the police demanded their custody, saying that their DNA test was yet to be conducted. The police also said the main accused, Vidhyadhar, is still at large, and officials believe that these accused can lead the police to him. The advocates of Pradeep, Azad and Sadhu, Khurshid Ansari and Ravi Yadav said, “We are very sure that soon our client will come out clean. Let the police file the chargesheet; we have our evidence and arguments ready.”
The police believe that Chintan met his co-accused several times before the murders and hatched the conspiracy to kill the duo, but — according to the police official — a week since his arrest Chintan is still mute and refuses to cooperate. The disappearance of Vidhyadhar, however, is worrying the officers more, as only his arrest would uncover the motive of the murder. According to a senior police official, Vidhyadhar has been totally untraceable for at least ast ten days, and he hadn’t called his friends or relatives. Geeta, his sister, had already claimed that he knows her, his wife’s and mother’s number by heart and it seemed that he is in dangerotherwise he would have called them from a phone booth. Officials are also saying that the theory that Vidhyadhar murdered Hema for not giving him Rs 5 lakh seems false.
