Hema Upadhyay murder: Plea for Chintan’s narco analysis rejected
Borivali Metropolitan Magistrate court on Friday rejected an application for conducting narco test on Chintan Upadhyay.
On January 1, officials of Kandivali police station, who are probing the murder of Chintan’s wife and artist, Hema Upadhyay, and her lawyer, Haresh Bhambani, had applied for narco analysis of Hema’s estranged husband, Chintan, who is suspected to have killed her.
While arguing over the need for narco analysis, the prosecution had told the court that Chintan is not cooperating with the police inquiry at all and is avoiding police questions about the murders. Whereas, Chintan’s lawyer had informed the court that his client refused to undertake the test and, owing to Supreme Court guidelines and fundamental human rights, such a test cannot be conducted without Chintan’s assent.
Following the court’s rejection of the application, police officials now appear even more worried as they need answers to a few questions that they are not getting from Chintan.
On December 11 last year, the bodies of Hema and Harish were found stuffed in two boxes dumped in a drain in Kandivali.
Meanwhile, the second hearing which took place in the Borivali Metropolitan Magistrate court was about perjury proceedings against Chintan’s lawyer, Advocate Jaishri Bhardwaj, who had filed an application in court on December 28, alleging “third degree torture” of her client by the Kandivali police.
During the hearing, Advocate Vinod Gangwal, representing Hema’s family alleged that Bhardwaj had misled the court and filed the complaint. To this, the defence lawyer team argued that Bhardwaj had been informed by some of Chintan’s relatives about third-degree and had never made any statement. She had just wanted to verify the information she received and had wanted to check on the physical condition of her client. Later, on January 8, after hearing the arguments, Magistrate Prasad Kulkarni disposed of the perjury.
Meanwhile, Khurshid K. Ansari, lawyer of accused, Aazaad Rajbhar, has informed The Asian Age that Aazaad’s relative has informed him that Aazaad is a minor.
