Police lack evidence against Chintan
MUMBAI: Despite interrogating artist Chintan Upadhyay for 12 days over the murders of his wife Hema and her lawyer Haresh Bhambani on December 11, the Kandivli police seem to be groping in the dark for a concrete motive and proof of a conspiracy.
YP Singh, a lawyer and former IPS officer, said, “Conspiracy is proved mainly on circumstantial evidence and strong evidence showing a meeting of minds, which is a critical component. It is one thing to know a person and another to be in contact with him to commit a murder. If the circumstantial evidence is not very strong, the whole case is weakened,”
Singh added, “The police made a mistake by arrested Chintan so early. They should have waited for Vidhyadhar [Rajbhar, a key suspect] to be arrested. Otherwise, they could have moved an application after seven days to seek judicial custody for Chintan and use the residual period for further investigation.”
Under Section 167 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CRPC), a suspect can be held in police custody for no more than 15 days. Once the 15 days are up, the person can be remanded in judicial custody. Chintan’s police custody ends on Monday, officials said.
The 43-year-old artist was picked up for questioning by the Kandivli police on the evening of December 21. After over six hours of questioning, Chintan was placed under arrest early on December 22 after the police claimed to have found a new piece of evidence.
The sudden arrest left crime branch officials red-faced as they had questioned Chintan seven consecutive days before he was picked up by the Kandivli police. Crime branch officials said they had found no damning evidence against Chintan but were careful to not give him a clean chit.
The crime branch is likely to submit the case diary to the court during Monday’s remand hearing. The diary was prepared in the seven days during which Chintan was questioned by crime branch officers, officials said.
Meanwhile, the Kandivli police have seized pen drives, hard disks, a sketch book and a diary from Chintan’s house and are examining the items in the hope of uncovering leads and establishing the motive. “We will ask art experts to examine the sketches for clues. This may also give us a glimpse into Chintan’s mental state at the time the illustrations were made. We are awaiting the forensic department’s reports on the study of his e-mail accounts and cell phone conversations,” said an officer, who did not wish to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
A police source said the call data records have not yielded any clues and that the police have no CCTV recordings of Chintan’s alleged meetings with the other suspects. A friend of Chintan has claimed he was in a meeting with a Hungarian artist at the time when one of these meetings is alleged to have taken place.