A Virginia man who claimed he dismembered his wife’s body after she took her own life is facing a life sentence after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors in Manassas called it “ridiculous” that Naresh Bhatt insisted that he woke to find Mamta Kafle Bhatt, ۲۸, dead from suicide in their bedroom in July ۲۰۲۴, then panicked because he thought he would be held responsible.
“He wants you to believe now that even though he cut up Mamta’s body, even though he stuffed her in the garbage can, he had nothing to do with her death,” Sarah Sami, senior assistant attorney of Prince William county’s commonwealth’s attorney office, told the court.
“Come on. That’s ridiculous. I’ll give it to him, he was a terrible husband. But Mamta did not commit suicide because he was a terrible husband.”
Bhatt was convicted on Tuesday after a six-week trial of first-degree murder, concealing a dead body and defiling a dead body. He will be sentenced in March.
Testifying in his own defense, Bhatt said the couple had argued and exchanged threats of divorce and suicide in the days leading up to his wife’s disappearance, and that she took her own life using a pesticide.
He said he tried to revive her, but gave up and took their infant daughter to a babysitter before intending to return to the house and kill himself.
Instead, he decided to go to Home Depot and Walmart to “to find anything to hide a body”, he admitted. He bought knives and cleaning supplies, prosecutors said, and he ended up using the knives and a saw to cut up her body to fit in a garbage can, Court TV reported.
Asked by defense attorney Tracey Lenox why he did not make a ۹۱۱ call, Bhatt said he was “really scared”, and did not report her missing for several days.
Jurors saw surveillance footage of Bhatt tossing large items in dumpsters near their house, and heard he made internet searches including “what happens if spouse disappears?” and how to “donate” a baby to a friend.
Mario Lugo, chief of the Manassas Park police department, told Washington DC’s Fox ۵ news affiliate last year that Mamta Bhatt’s remains might never be found.
Sami told jurors that Bhatt, who is from Nepal, was a controlling, obsessive husband who mistreated his wife throughout their marriage and denied her access to their car and money. “The reality was Mamta lived in a house of terrors … a kingdom of torture where the king reigned,” she said.
Lennox urged the jury to acquit Bhatt of the concealment charge because his actions were not committed with malice.
Gita Kafle, Mamta Bhatt’s mother, testified that her daughter would never have abandoned their child, now aged three.
Holly Wirth, a friend and colleague of Mamta Bhatt, told reporters that she was relieved that “the truth has come out”.
She said: “He killed her. He defiled her. He threw her away like trash.”
