Police suspect property dispute behind Mumbai artist, lawyer’s murder
Mumbai: The Mumbai police suspects that a property dispute could be behind the double murder of well-known painter and installation artist Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer Haresh Bhambhani.
The police said that the investigation was in its final stages, and indicated that a property dispute could be the reason behind the crime.
The police have formed two to three teams to work on the case, while one is investigating the case in Mumbai, another team has been sent out of the city.
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Mumbai artist, lawyer found murdered and packed in cardboard boxes
The police have registered a case under Sections 302, 201 and 34 IPC against unknown persons. The bodies were packed in two cardboard boxes and dumped in a drainage in Kandivali. The boxes were noticed by a ragpicker on Saturday evening, who informed the police about it.
The police have checked the CCTV footage of Laxmi Industrial Estate, Andheri West, where Hema’s studio is located. In the footage, the police found Hema Upadhyay and Mr Bhambani at about 6.30 pm on Friday, a day prior to the recovery of bodies, leaving from the studio in the advocate’s Honda City car.
According to police sources, the advocate’s phone was active till 8.30 pm on Friday, when he received his last call, after which his phone was switched off, which made his daughter worried. Officials are trying to identify this caller. The phones of both deceased, the grey Honda City car of Mr Bhambani and their purses are still missing, and the police are on the hunt for them.
The officials checked the missing persons’ reports of the city to identify the bodies when they came across a missing complaint made by the daughter of a senior high court advocate in the Matunga police station.
The police called the daughter, and she identified the male body as her father Haresh Bhambani, 65, who left from his house on Friday evening and went missing.
The girl also identified the female body as that of a client of her father, artist Hema Chintan Upadhyay, 45. The police later came to know on Saturday Hema’s servant Lalit Mandal, 35, had also filled a missing person complaint about her at Santacruz police station.
