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Matunga property dispute the motive for twin murders

on Saturday evening. They were packed in cardboard cartons wrapped in white plastic. Investigations suggest that three of the accused held Bhambhani and either strangled or smothered him to death, while the other two killed Hema.

“Sadhu’s statements have inconsistencies. He holds Vidyadhar responsible for everything. He will be questioned about the extent of each one’s involvement,” said Sujit Pandey, inspector general, UP STF. Sadhu told the STF that Vidyadhar is from a village in Varanasi. The other accused, except Sadhu, were employed at the warehouse.

“Sadhu said Vidyadhar claimed that Hema was not clearing his dues for months and he met her a couple of times to demand Rs 5 lakh, in vain,” an STF official said. Last Friday, Vidyadhar called Hema to his warehouse on the pretext of offering her “fresh evidence” against her husband, which she could use in court. He even sought to know what she was willing to pay for the information. Hema said she would meet him with Bhambhani and go through the evidence before fixing a price.

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Varanasi

“When Hema and Bhambhani reached the warehouse, they were knocked out with a sedative. The bodies were packed into cartons,” said an STF official. A tempo driver was paid to take the cartons to a nullah near Dahanukarwadi in Kandivli. He was told the cartons contained scrap. When he read news reports the next day, he realized he had ferried corpses. He approached the police.

By the time three of Vidyadhar’s aides, Azad, Pradeep and Vijay, all with the surname Rajbhar, were detained from his warehouse, Vidyadhar and Sadhu had left Mumbai by train. Vidyadhar got off midway and Sadhu went to Varanasi. The police hunted for Sadhu at Jaunpur and Mirzapur before nabbing him from his home in Kavirampur village. He will be brought to Mumbai

on Tuesday.

From Hema’s cellphone call records, the police deduced that Vidyadhar had been calling her repeatedly for two or three days. “Vidyadhar had worked for Chintan for a long time before the latter moved to Delhi. Vidyadhar then started working for Hema. He was indebted to Chintan as the latter had loaned him Rs 6 lakh when Vidyadhar’s father was unwell (he eventually passed away). Chintan had also sent him to Jaipur for advanced training in fabrication work. Only on Vidyadhar’s arrest can we find out if it was at anyone’s behest that the murder was committed,” a crime branch official said. The police are going through Chintan’s call records. Chintan came down to Mumbai and met the police on his own.

Vidyadhar’s warehouse, where the murders took place, is a cluster of rooms located in a narrow lane of Laljipada. The area is an industrial belt, which also has a sprawling slum. The warehouse, not far from a police beat chowky, has been sealed.

Read this story in Telugu

MUMBAI/LUCKNOW: Contemporary artist Chintan Upadhyay has not been given a clean chit in the double murders of his estranged wife Hema and her lawyer Haresh Bhambhani , even as one of the accused was nabbed from Uttar Pradesh on Monday. In a joint operation, the UP special task force (STF) and the Mumbai police picked up Shivkumar ‘Sadhu’ Rajbhar (25) from Varanasi. Twenty-one debit/credit cards belonging to Hema and Bhambhani were recovered from him. This is the fourth detention, though the prime accused, Vidyadhar Rajbhar, who owns a warehouse in Laljipada in Kandivli (West), is yet to be nabbed.The police do not fully believe Sadhu’s claim that the double murders were a consequence of Hema’s refusal to pay up Rs 5 lakh that she owed Vidyadhar and his aides, possibly including Sadhu, for fabrication work. Only Vidyadhar can shed light on whether this indeed the case or if they were contract killings at the behest of someone else.The bodies of Hema, an internationally acclaimed installation artist, and Bhambhani were found in a nullah in Kandivli (West)