Virginia man convicted of murder says he didn’t kill wife before dismembering her body | Virginia

A Virginia man who said he dismembered his wife’s body after she killed herself faces a life sentence after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

Manassas prosecutors called it “ridiculous” that Naresh Bhatt insisted that when he woke up he found Mamta Kafle Bhatt, 28, dead by suicide in their bedroom in July 2024, and 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 put her in the trash, he had nothing to do with her death,” Sarah Sami, a senior deputy attorney for the Prince William County Prosecutor’s Office, told the court.

“Come on. This is ridiculous. I’ll tell him, he was a horrible husband. But Mamta didn’t kill herself because he was a horrible husband.”

Bhatt was convicted Tuesday after a six-week trial of first-degree murder, concealing a corpse and desecrating a corpse. 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 before his wife’s disappearance, and that she had killed herself by using a pesticide.

He said he tried to revive her, but gave up and took their little girl to a babysitter before intending to return home and kill himself.

Instead, he decided to go to Home Depot and Walmart to “find something that could hide a body,” he admitted. He bought knives and cleaning supplies, prosecutors said, and ended up using the knives and a saw to cut up her body to put in a trash can, Court TV reported.

Asked by defense attorney Tracey Lenox why he didn’t call 911, Bhatt said he was “really scared” and didn’t report her missing for several days.

Jurors saw surveillance footage of Bhatt throwing large items into dumpsters near their home and heard that he did Internet searches, including “what happens if your spouse disappears?” » and how to “give” a baby to a friend.

Mario Lugo, chief of the Manassas Park Police Department, told Washington, D.C.’s Fox 5 news channel last year that Mamta Bhatt’s remains may never be found.

Sami told jurors that Bhatt, originally from Nepal, was a domineering and obsessive husband who abused his wife throughout their marriage and denied her access to their car and money. “The reality was that Mamta lived in a house of terrors… a kingdom of torture where the king ruled,” she said.

Lennox urged the jury to acquit Bhatt of the cover-up charge because his actions were not committed with malice.

Gita Kafle, Mamta Bhatt’s mother, said her daughter would never have abandoned their child, now three years old.

Holly Wirth, a friend and colleague of Mamta Bhatt, told reporters she was relieved that “the truth had come out.”

She said: “He killed her. He defiled her. He threw her away like trash.”