The husband of 28-year-old Nepali-origin American woman, Mamta Kafle Bhatt, has been arrested in Virginia, United States, for the alleged concealment of his wife’s body, more than three weeks after she disappeared.
Naresh Bhatt was arrested on Thursday after police executed a search warrant at the couple’s home. He is facing a felony charge of prohibition against concealment of the body in connection with the disappearance of his wife. He is accused of killing her wife inside their home and dragging her body outside, the court documents said as accessed by CNN.
According to the report, the investigators found blood splatter in the master bedroom leading to the bathroom’s bathtub. “The bed appeared to be moved, blocking a closet; light pink stains were found on bedroom carpeting after the bed was removed; and pools of blood were found in the bathroom as if something was dragged across the floor, along with blood pooling on the shower floor,” the investigators said.
The police said that Bhatt made several inconsistent statements about his wife’s whereabouts. The police said that Bhatt last saw his wife on July 31 but did not report her missing until August 5, after authorities began investigating her disappearance.
“On or about July 30, 2024, the accused Naresh Bhatt murdered his wife, Mamta Bhatt. The incident occurred at their residence in the city of Manassas Park,” a police incident report stated.
The report also claimed that Mamta destroyed her mobile before disappearing.
Investigators further said that there was significant lack of recent contact between Mamta and her family, friends, employer and on social media, so they elevated her missing status to involuntary/critical missing person status. For weeks, community members, colleagues and friends searched for Mamta, looking for morsels of information about her whereabouts as they shared every update on Facebook group pages and GoFundMe accounts organised by friends.
Evidence also suggested that Mamta’s body had been inside the residence before being dragged out of the house. “During the course of this investigation, a substantial amount of digital and forensic evidence consistent with her death was recovered,” prosecutors said in court on Friday.
Prosecutors said there’s evidence that Bhatt was in the process of packing up his home and selling his car. Passports for Bhatt and his daughter were in full view when police entered the home for a search.
In interviews with news outlets before his arrest, Bhatt expressed concern over his wife’s disappearance. “I’m the one who is suffering,” he told WUSA9. “She is my baby’s mom. She is my wife. I’m the one suffering, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
Mamta was last seen in public July 27 and spoke to a friend the next day, according to the Manassas Park Police Department (MPPD). She was then last seen by her husband on July 31, and was reported missing by her husband August 5.
Bhatt is a former US Army Reserve automated logistics who served from June 2017 to February 2024. He left the Army in the rank of specialist. Mamta’s family, who live in Nepal, obtained a visa and are in the process of the traveling to the US to try and get emergency custody of the baby, the report added.
(With inputs from CNN)
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