A Virginia man has been charged with murder more than four months after his wife disappeared and a large amount of blood was found in their suburban Washington home, authorities announced Monday.
Naresh Bhatt, The 37 was indicted by a Prince William County grand jury and charged with murder as well as desecration of a corpse, according to online court documents.
The body of 28 year old Mamta Bhatt has not been found. But investigators linked her DNA to blood found in the couple's home, Manassas Park Police Chief Mario Lugo said at a news conference Monday evening.
“From the beginning we believed he was murdered,” Lugo told reporters.
Lugo said investigators executed their first search warrant when Naresh Bhatt was at the home with the couple's child and found blood in the bedroom as well as the bathroom.
He said the evidence showed that Bhatt mutilated his wife's body, leading to charges of desecration.
“I think we have a strong case that there is no body,” Lugo said.
Police also said his contradictory statements to police, media and the public raised red flags to CBS affiliate WUSA-TV. informed,
Chief Lugo said, “We stood back and listened and it was one thing. We tried to see what he was telling the public and it was not what he was telling us.”
Chief Public Defender Tracy Lennox did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment on the new charges against Bhatt, who is already in jail awaiting trial on separate charges in the case .
The investigation has drawn international attention to the small Northern Virginia community, where murder cases are rare. The disappearance of pediatric nurse Mamta Bhatt has caused community members in Nepal and her family to come together to find out what happened.
They posted on social media, hosted community events and organized a rally. Within a few days, community members started putting public pressure on her husband.
Three weeks after her disappearance in late July, Naresh Bhatt was charged with aggravated concealment of a dead body and jailed, where he remains. A prosecutor said in court over the summer that the amount of blood found in the home indicated injuries that were not survivable.
Olivia Diaz/AP
The investigation into Mamta Bhatt's death continued. But in September, Lennox, the public defender, argued that Naresh Bhatt was still entitled to a speedy trial in a case of concealment of a body. A hearing on that charge was scheduled for next week.
According to law enforcement experts, cases of disembodied murder are not unheard of. And while they may still be difficult to prosecute, they have become easier to prosecute in recent years due to new types of evidence such as DNA, cellphone location information and surveillance cameras.
Tad DiBiase is a former federal prosecutor and author of the 2014 book, “No-Body Homicide Cases: A Practical Guide to Investigating, Prosecuting, and Winning Cases When the Victim is Missing.”
He maintains a list of murder trials on his website. As of September 2, DiBiase noted that there was an 87% conviction rate after 604 trials across the US.
“We've done over 10 searches. We've done grid searches ─ searches with K9s,” Lugo previously told WUSA-TV. “In terms of search warrants and subpoenas, I think we're probably pushing 30 that we've gathered and obtained information about.”