VIRGINIA — A Prince William County jury on Tuesday convicted Naresh Bhatt of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Mamta Kafle Bhatt, a 28-year-old nurse and mother who vanished from her Manassas Park home in the summer of 2024. Her body has never been found.
For her family, the verdict ends more than two years of searching and waiting. It is also a rare murder conviction won without a body or a witness to the killing. It rested on blood evidence, phone records, surveillance video, and the defendant's own testimony, in which he admitted cutting up his wife's body but insisted he did not kill her.
The verdict
The jury of eight women and four men deliberated a little more than four hours before finding Bhatt, 39, guilty on all three counts: first-degree murder, concealing a dead body, and physically defiling a dead body. The jurors could have chosen second-degree murder. They chose first-degree, which under Virginia law means the killing was deliberate and premeditated.
Her family hugged in the courtroom. Bhatt, in custody since his arrest in August 2024, was denied bond while he awaits sentencing. He faces 20 years to life in prison on the murder count, and up to five more years on each of the other two counts.
In a statement, Commonwealth's Attorney Amy Ashworth called the verdict an important measure of justice for Mamta and a reminder that the absence of a victim's body does not mean the absence of justice. Bhatt's attorney said the defense could not comment before the case concludes.
The case the jury heard
The trial opened on October 5 and ran about six weeks, with prosecutors calling close to 100 witnesses and showing nearly 500 exhibits, according to WJLA. Investigators found large amounts of Mamta's blood in the couple's bedroom and bathroom, including beneath an 8-by-10-foot section of bedroom carpet and in the bathroom plumbing. A state forensic scientist testified that blood and hair on a reciprocating power saw matched Mamta's DNA profile, built from her hairbrush. Bhatt bought the saw weeks before she disappeared and later gave it to a landscaper, who turned it over to police.
His internet searches began months before Mamta vanished. In March 2024, searches linked to him asked what happens if a spouse disappears in Virginia and how long someone must wait to remarry after a spouse dies. Later searches covered meat cutters, knife sharpeners, and hand saws. Surveillance video showed Bhatt putting bags into a dumpster in Manassas and a trash compactor in Falls Church in the hours after prosecutors say Mamta died. Her brother testified that she had sent him a photo appearing to show a facial injury and had said she felt unsafe.
Bhatt took the stand in his own defense, reversing the story he had told police and the public for two years, that he did not know where his wife had gone. He testified that on the morning of July 30, 2024, he found Mamta unresponsive on the bedroom floor, with vomit nearby that he said contained pills and a pesticide. He said he tried to revive her for up to an hour, never called 911, and panicked because he feared he would be blamed. He admitted using knives and the saw on her body and throwing bags away, but said the bags held her belongings, not her remains. A defense psychologist testified that Bhatt has post-traumatic stress disorder, and a defense bloodstain expert said the blood evidence alone could not establish how Mamta died. In rebuttal, her mother and brother said she had no plans to harm herself, and a toxicologist challenged his account of the pesticide.
The search for Mamta
Mamta was last seen on July 27, 2024, at UVA Health Prince William Medical Center in Manassas, where she worked as a nurse, and spoke with her mother in Nepal by video call on July 29. When she did not arrive for her shift on August 1, coworkers asked police to check on her. Bhatt told officers he did not believe she was missing, then reported her missing himself on August 5. Police classified her disappearance as involuntary, and volunteers spent months searching.
Police searched the home on August 21 and arrested Bhatt the next day on a charge of concealing a dead body. A grand jury added the murder charge in December 2024. No trace of Mamta's remains has ever been found.
What happens next
Bhatt returns to court on March 12, 2027, when Judge Irving will impose his sentence. His lawyers can appeal after sentencing. For her family and friends, the work is different now: her friend Holly Wirth said they will make sure Mamta's daughter grows up knowing how loved her mother was, and her friend Sunita Basnet said the verdict should push the community to take domestic violence more seriously.
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Reporting note: This story is based on reporting by CNN, InsideNoVa, WTOP, WJLA, NBC4 Washington, FOX 5 DC, and Court TV coverage of the trial, and on a statement issued after the verdict by Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney Amy Ashworth.
