MANASSAS, Va. — On Day 17 of his murder trial, Naresh Bhatt told jurors he did not kill his wife. He said he found Mamta Kafle Bhatt dead in their bedroom, and he admitted what he did next: he cut up her body with a saw and put her remains in the trash, according to Court TV.
It was July 30, 2024, when he came home and found her unresponsive, he testified. FOX 5 DC reported his description of the scene: Mamta on the bedroom floor, vomit on her face and on the floor — vomit that he said held blood, food particles, pill capsules and traces of Celphos, a powerful agricultural fumigant used to kill insects.
“I kissed her and told her, ‘Wake up, wake up,’” Bhatt testified. He said he worked to revive her for the better part of an hour: “I did CPR, I also did mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to try and save her and I put air in [her mouth] every 20 seconds for 45 minutes.”
The testimony is the center of his defense. The charges against Bhatt, 39, are first-degree murder, concealing a dead body and defiling a dead body, and he pleaded not guilty to all of them. On Wednesday he put it plainly: “I have not committed any crime and I did not commit any murder.”
‘I was scared. I panicked.’
Bhatt never called 911. His lawyer asked him why, and he pointed to their baby daughter and to his own fear. “I was thinking about my daughter, I was scared and I was panicking, that’s why I hid her body,” he said. “I was scared. I panicked. I thought I would be alive for my daughter.”
He said he first took his daughter to her grandmother’s home. When he came back, he put his wife’s body in the bathtub while he decided to conceal it.
The saw and the trash can
The next day, July 31, after taking his daughter to a babysitter, Bhatt used a saw and knives to cut up the body until it fit into trash bags, which he placed in the trash bin for pickup. He testified that the saw had belonged to his wife and was kept in the garage, and he acknowledged leaving one of the knives outside the dumpster, saying it was in case a neighbor wanted it.
“Her body, it wouldn’t have gone straight into the trash can, so I used a saw to make arrangements for her body to fit inside the trash bag [and] trash can,” he testified. FOX 5 DC reported that he described starting by trying to separate her legs from her torso.
The Potomac, and the pills
The bin, Bhatt said, was too heavy for him to lift. He drove to a local park instead, looking for a place to dump the body in the Potomac River. He never dumped it. He drove back home with the body.
Once home, he said, he twice overdosed on pills, trying to take his own life. “When my wife is gone, why should I live?” he testified. He then put her remains in the trash bin and left them there until the bin was picked up at his home.
The prosecution’s account
None of that is the prosecution’s account. Prosecutors allege he came home around midnight on July 29, 2024, to find his wife on the phone with a male coworker — and, enraged, strangled her. FOX 5 DC reported that police arrested Bhatt on Aug. 22, 2024, after bloodstains turned up in the couple’s bedroom and bathroom, and that investigators recovered a power saw containing hair fragments.
Thursday was Bhatt’s second day on the witness stand in his own defense. Prosecutors rested their case on Monday.
What he said on Wednesday
Bhatt took the stand on Wednesday, the first witness for his own defense, and told jurors he had always wanted to testify. The day was mostly his life story. He grew up in Nepal, met Mamta after she sent him a Facebook friend request, and described a marriage that soured in 2024 — fights in which he threatened divorce and she threatened suicide. He denied ever hitting her. He answered in English while an interpreter translated the questions, and he told the court he worried the jurors might not understand him.
A nurse at UVA Health Prince William Medical Center, Mamta was reported missing on Aug. 5, 2024. Her body has never been found.
Also Read: Naresh Bhatt Murder Trial Continues After Testimony on Power Saw
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