Fate of Virginia man accused of murdering, chopping up wife now up to jury

Naresh Bhatt claims his wife died by suicide and that he panicked when he found her body, which led him to dismember her and throw her into the garbage.MANASSAS, Va. (CN) — A jury took over Tuesday in the case of a Northern Virginia man accused of murdering his wife, dismembering her body and stuffing it into a trash can.After five weeks of trial, Naresh Bhatt, 39, of Manassas Park, listened Tuesday as a prosecutor implored jurors to convict him of murder in connection with the 2024 disappearance of Mamta Kafle Bhatt, 28, a nurse and the mother of the couple’s now 3-year-old daughter. Her body was never found, but prosecutors charged her husband with defiling and concealing a body as well as murder.While the case against Bhatt was circumstantial, he took the witness stand last week and denied that he killed her. Instead, he said that he found his wife’s body after she died by suicide. Fearing he would be blamed, he panicked and decided to chop up her body and toss it out with the trash.“And now, the defendant wants you to believe his story, his made-up crazy story,” said Sarah Sami, senior assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Prince William County, Virginia, during closing arguments. “All the defendant has done that you’ve seen from the moment that Mamta went missing, all he did was lie.”She told jurors Bhatt signaled his true intentions with a message sent to his wife in February 2024: “The days are coming that you’ll regret a lot.” Sami said, quoting the text message. “He told Mamta what he was going to do with her.”He delivered on that promise 162 days later, according to prosecutors. “The defendant murdered Mamta Kafle,” Sami said, referring to the victim by her maiden name. ‘The defendant dismembered Mamta Kafle. And the defendant got rid of her like garbage."Bhatt’s attorney Tracey Lenox, chief public defender for Prince William County, urged jurors to avoid doing the “easy thing.” It would be easy, she explained, to “allow your instincts of compassion and empathy to dictate your discussion and decision-making when you go back to the jury room. The easy thing would be to give in to a gut level need. I think it is very human to place blame somewhere for the pain and the trauma that Mamta Kafle’s family has endured for the last two-plus years.”Jurors, she said, should take care to determine only whether the prosecution has proven each element of the offenses beyond a doubt. This means the jury should not be in search of truth but “really inquisitors of doubt.”Bhatt told his side of the story to a stunned courtroom. But when questioned by police after her disappearance, Bhatt initially said he didn’t know where his wife had gone. During closing arguments Tuesday, Lenox pointed out Bhatt says he actually told the suicide story two weeks after his arrest.Mamta Kafle Bhatt’s mother, brother and a close collection of friends sat in the front row, mostly dressed in her favorite color — red. Beyond family, neighbors, fellow ex-patriots of Nepal, police investigators and nurses from area hospitals packed the courtroom.Categories / Criminal, TrialsSubscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads