Week later, Hema’s advocate asks to include Chintan’s name in FIR

Exactly a week after the murder of artist Hema Upadhyay, her advocate has demanded that her estranged husband, Chintan Upadhyay’s name be included in the FIR. Advocate Vinod Gangane has asked to include Chintan’s name as per CRPC 154. Mr Gangane has said that Hema’s brothers stated that there was a threat to Hema’s life from Chintan, so police should look into that aspect as well.

On Friday, police recorded the statements of Hema’s brother, Manish Hirani, and her cousin brother, Deepak Prasad. According to sources, Mr Prasad informed the police that Hema was suffering from some disease and was not able to conceive, which is why she once told Chintan to meet a gynaecologist for fertility test of both of them. However, Chintan took that as an affront. Mr Prasad even said that when the couple’s friends advised them to separate and share their property equally, Chintan announced that he would go to any extent to not pay Hema at all.

However, Amir Rizvi, a mutual friend of Hema and Chintan, rubbished Mr Prasad’s claims.

He told The Asian Age that just a few days ago, Chintan had visited their Juhu flat and there were no verbal arguments between him and Hema. Mr Rizvi said that during their struggling days, Chintan and Hema had stood by each other and Chintan had never tortured her.

Meanwhile, police sources revealed that based on a tip-off, they are expecting the main accused, Vidhyadhar Rajbhar, to surrender in Dindoshi court within a day or two. However, another source said that they were expecting Vidhyadhar to surrender on Friday but nothing happened and now, police officials are worried that Vidhyadhar too may commit suicide out of fear of society.

On Friday, police detained 17-year-old Bipin, son of tempo driver Vijay Rajbhar, in connection with the case. Vijay’s father, Ramaadhar Rajbhar, while speaking to this newspaper, said that his son was driving the tempo for the past four years and as they belonged to the same village as that of the main accused, they used to often give Vidhyadhar boxes to deliver.

Sources from Kandivali police station said that the bodies of Hema and her lawyer were recovered Saturday night and during investigation, some locals tipped them off that three persons had come to dump the bodies. Later, after police alerted their sources, the latter informed the police about Aazad, Pradip and Vijay as their appearance matched the description given by police.