Prosecutor Blasts Naresh Bhatt's 'made Up Crazy Story' About Wife's Disappearance

What Bhatt said happened that night

Naresh Bhatt testified that on the night of July 29, 2024, he went to sleep with the couple's infant daughter in a separate room, down the hall from the primary bedroom he shared with his wife, Mamta Kafle Bhatt. He said he woke a few times to tend to the baby, including around 4 a.m. on July 30.

That's when, he told jurors, he walked into the primary bedroom to use the en suite bathroom and found Kafle on her back on the floor, surrounded by vomit that contained pills, blood, and what he said was an open packet of Celphos, a highly toxic insecticide.

He said he tried to resuscitate her for 45 minutes to an hour, carrying her across the room to the bathroom to try to give her water. She never responded and never breathed, he said.

Instead of calling 911, Bhatt said he panicked. He texted the family's babysitter, dropped his daughter off at her home, then drove to Home Depot. He bought gloves there. Asked why, he told his attorney, "I have no idea."

Over the next day and a half, Bhatt testified, he cut his wife's body into pieces in the bathroom using a reciprocating saw, then bagged the remains and drove them to trash dumpsters, including a compactor at a former apartment complex in Falls Church where he used to live. He later gave the saw to a landscaper in place of a $40 payment. The landscaper turned it over to police, and a forensic scientist testified DNA and blood found on it were very likely Kafle's.

Who Mamta Kafle Bhatt was

Kafle was 28 years old and worked as a registered nurse in the medical surgical unit at UVA Health Prince William Medical Center in Manassas, Virginia. She was last seen there on July 27, 2024.

She spoke with a friend the next day and posted a TikTok video of herself with her infant daughter. Then she disappeared — three weeks before that daughter's first birthday, a timing loved ones found especially unsettling given how devoted they said she was to the child.

Her mother, Gita, and brother, Mahesh, traveled from Nepal to Virginia after she vanished. Both have testified at trial through an interpreter. Gita now lives with Mahesh and helps raise Kafle's toddler.

Mahesh told jurors he'd warned his sister not to marry Bhatt after meeting him the first time. He said that a couple of months before she disappeared, Kafle secretly sent him a photo that appeared to show a black eye, telling him Bhatt had given it to her — and telling him to keep the photo in case she needed it later, while she deleted it from her own phone so Bhatt wouldn't find it.

"Now the defendant wants you to believe his story, his made-up crazy story." — Sarah Sami, Senior Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney

The charges and what they mean

Bhatt, 39, is charged with first-degree murder, concealing a dead body, and defiling a dead body. He has pleaded not guilty to all three.

He was arrested on August 22, 2024, about three weeks after Kafle was reported missing, and was initially charged only with concealing a dead body. A criminal complaint at the time alleged he murdered his wife on or about July 30, 2024, but he wasn't formally charged with murder yet. A Prince William County grand jury added the first-degree murder and defiling-a-dead-body counts in December 2024.

First-degree murder in Virginia requires proof of a willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing; it carries a possible life sentence. The concealment and defiling charges are lesser felonies under state law. Judge Kimberly Irving has also instructed jurors they may consider second-degree murder — which doesn't require premeditation — if they find the elements of first-degree murder aren't met.

On the stand, Bhatt admitted to the concealment and defiling conduct — cutting up his wife's body and disposing of it — but denied the murder charge. Asked directly by his own attorney, Tracey Lenox, whether he killed his wife, Bhatt answered through a translator, "No, not even imagination."

What each side told the jury

Senior Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Sarah Sami laid out the prosecution's closing argument in blunt terms: "The defendant murdered Mamta Kafle. The defendant dismembered Mamta Kafle, and the defendant got rid of her like garbage."

She dismissed Bhatt's account outright. "Now the defendant wants you to believe his story, his made-up crazy story. All the defendant has done … from the moment that Mamta went missing, all he did was lie. He lied to every single person. And it's hard to keep up with lies. They start slipping up," Sami told jurors.

She also challenged the PTSD explanation for why he didn't call for help: "A normal person who finds their wife dead on the floor with some supposed poison calls 911 and somehow he wants us to believe it's a cultural thing? Are you kidding?"

Sami reminded jurors Kafle was close to becoming a U.S. citizen and argued there was no sign she intended to take her own life. Of the landfill where prosecutors believe her remains ended up, Sami said: "We know she's dead, but she is missing because they will never be able to give her her last rights. She's in pieces, crushed in some landfill somewhere. That is what this family will have to live with." She closed by telling the jury, "Don't let him control the last memory of Mamta."

Defense attorney Tracey Lenox pushed back on how prosecutors framed Kafle. She argued Kafle was not a "pure victim," but a woman with agency, access to money and a job — someone who was "deeply unhappy" and under pressure from her family to stay in the marriage. She told jurors, "If a doubt about what happened lives in your mind, based on reason, you must render a not guilty verdict," and asked them to "go back and consider whether the commonwealth has met their burden."

During cross-examination, Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Matthew Sweet was even more direct, telling Bhatt, "You're a liar... You lied," a moment that drew applause in the courtroom before the judge called for order. A defense psychologist, Dr. Barry Rosenfeld of Fordham University, testified he found "a very... solid basis" for diagnosing Bhatt with PTSD, calling the panic Bhatt described "certainly a plausible way of behaving" — though he added that didn't extend to "the cutting of a body."

The physical evidence

A forensic scientist testified it was "beyond likely" that most of the blood on the stained carpet in the primary bedroom was Kafle's. Analyst Iris Dalley Graff showed jurors a diagram of where the bed originally sat versus where it had been moved — covering an area of carpet with blood underneath it but not on top, which she said "would generally indicate some type of cleaning."

Graff also testified that blood evidence showed a trail dragged from near the bed to the primary bathroom, where investigators found further blood evidence.

A friend of the couple testified that a few weeks after Kafle disappeared, Bhatt gave her all of his wife's jewelry and his own wedding band — and that seven or eight months earlier, he had spoken to her about the possibility of divorcing Kafle.

Surveillance video shown to jurors captured Bhatt, wearing gloves, dumping numerous bags into different trash dumpsters in the days after Kafle vanished. He testified that none of those particular bags contained her remains — only her belongings — but acknowledged bringing his then-11-month-old daughter along on some of those trips.

What happens next

The case went to the jury — eight women and four men — Tuesday afternoon after closing arguments, following a trial that stretched nearly five weeks and included testimony from almost 100 witnesses. Jurors must weigh hundreds of pieces of evidence and decide among first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or acquittal on the murder count, separate from the concealment and defiling charges Bhatt has already admitted to on the stand. A verdict could come as early as this week.