Shivkumar Rajbhar, the main suspect in the murder case of Hema Upadhayay and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani, has been detained by the police.
“We have not arrested but detained Shivkumar Rajbhar alias Sadhu in Varanasi,” Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Deven Bharti said. Police had yesterday detained Azad Rajbhar, Pradeep Rajbhar and Vijay Rajbhar in Mumbai in connection with the murders. Based on information provided by the trio, the police detained Sadhu, who is suspected to have played a key role in the murder of the artist and her lawyer, police said.
The three detained from Mumbai are in the business of manufacturing and selling fibre glass, which was used by Hema and her estranged husband Chintan Upadhyaya, also an artist, for their installations, said an officer privy to details of the probe. Those detained had known Chintan for the last few years. One among them had called up Hema on her mobile phone before her murder, police said.
The bodies of Hema, 43 and Bhambhani, 65 (with their hands and feet tied with ropes), were recovered from cardboard boxes in a drain in suburban Kandivali on Saturday following which police were called in.
Their body samples have been sent for chemical analysis and autopsy reports are awaited, a senior police officer said. “As per our probe their bodies (in boxes) were transported in a tempo from suburban Juhu to Kandivali (W),” DCP (Detection) Dhananjay Kulkarni said.
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