How a Prosecutor Got Naresh Bhatt to Say Yes

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Thursday, the 5th of November, 2026. A courtroom in Manassas, Virginia. A prosecutor stands up to ask his first question. His first words to the man on the stand? You're a liar. And the man answers, yes. This is Naresh Bhatt. He's on trial for the murder of his wife, Mamta Kafle Bhatt, a nurse and the mother of their baby girl. Her body has never been found. He has pleaded not guilty. For two years, he said she had left him. The day before this question, he told the jury something completely different. He told them she was already dead when he found her and that he got rid of her body so it would never be found. Sweet tells him his fear of being prosecuted was stronger than his feelings to save her. Through his interpreter, he answers, it wasn't like that. By the time I found her, he says, Mamta was dead. Now, the prosecutor is about to test every word of that story. [00:00:59] Speaker 2: And you have been thinking about killing Mamta for months. [00:01:08] Naresh Bhatt: I never think about that. Never, ever. [00:01:12] Speaker 1: His phone, her messages, his four in the morning, all of it was put to him on the stand. July 2024. Mamta Kafle Bhatt is 28, a registered nurse at a hospital in Manassas and the mother of a baby girl. She's last seen alive that month. Days later, she doesn't show up for work. When officers come to the door days later, her husband says she has gone away to New York or Texas. In the weeks after, a friend told the jury, he gave her the couple's jewelry and his own wedding ring. She handed it to police. To Mamta's brother, he says, there are other people missing from our neighborhood as well. In August 2024, he's arrested. Charged with her murder, with concealing a dead body and with defiling one. According to Fox 5, he has been in custody ever since. He pleads not guilty. Two years later, his trial opens in Manassas. For four weeks, the prosecution calls more than 70 witnesses. A digital investigator who read his phone. Store employees. A landscaper. Scientists from the state lab. Mamta's brother is the last one. Some of what they heard was new. A Lidl employee identified him on store video twice on the 30th of July, at about 8.50 in the morning, and again at 10 past 5. Bhatt had told police he last saw his wife the next day, the 31st. A landscaper told the jury Bhatt gave him a battery-powered saw as payment for lawn work. He later handed it to investigators. A state forensic scientist told the jury the blood and DNA on that saw were very likely Mamta's. Carmack's employees said he sold his Tesla days later and that it was cleaned for resale before police had it. One of Mamta's best friends, Sunita Bhandari, told the jury Mamta's mother called her on the 2nd of August. She hadn't reached her daughter in days. Bhandari's calls went straight to voicemail. And Mamta's brother told the jury he had warned her not to marry Naresh. Months before she disappeared, he said, his sister told him, I am not safe. On Monday, the 2nd of November, the prosecution rests. On Wednesday, the 4th of November, the defense calls its first witness, Naresh Bhatt himself. Until now, NBC4 reported, the only account he'd given police and reporters was that she left. His lawyer starts at the beginning. Bhatt tells the jury he was born in New Delhi in India and grew up in Nepal. He describes being taken by Maoist rebels as a teenager during Nepal's civil war. He says they tried to recruit him, that he was beaten, and that he got away. He says his family didn't know whether he had run away to India or been captured. In 2016, he tells the jury, he won the U.S. visa lottery and moved to America. He worked odd jobs, joined the army reserves, and became a citizen. Years later, in the United States, he says a friend request appeared on his Facebook. It was from Mamta. He tells the jury that is how he first saw her. Her brother never liked him. Bhatt told the jury he didn't know that. Then, the marriage. The first two years, his lawyer asks. Were they happy? [00:04:39] Speaker 4: Did you ever physically hurt her? [00:04:42] Speaker 1: Never. [00:04:43] Speaker 4: Um, would you say, was your marriage happy during these first two years? [00:04:50] Naresh Bhatt: Very, very happy. [00:04:51] Speaker 1: He tells the jury the couple lost two pregnancies before their daughter was born. And then, his own lawyer does something unusual. He's shown his messages to Mamta and asked to judge himself. [00:05:04] Speaker 5: Were you being kind to Mamta in this conversation? [00:05:08] Naresh Bhatt: No. [00:05:10] Speaker 5: Were you being, frankly, a little emotionally cruel to Mamta in this conversation? [00:05:15] Speaker 1: Yes. Cruel with words, he says. Never with his hands. He tells the jury he never physically harmed her. Then, on Thursday, the 5th of November, his lawyer gets to the night itself. What follows is his account, as he told it under oath. He says he goes to bed around 8 in the evening, in a room with the baby. Mamta stays downstairs. [00:05:41] Naresh Bhatt: Usually, if I have a baby, around 12 o'clock and then around 4 o'clock, then, yeah, that's the regular. [00:05:49] Speaker 1: Around 12 and around 4 o'clock, that detail will matter. At about 4, he says, he goes to the main bedroom and finds Mamta on the floor. He tells the jury there was vomit, pills, a pill bottle, and an open packet of a pesticide from Nepal. He names it, Selfos. He says it's a pesticide. Back home in Nepal, he says, it's used to protect the wheat. He says he tried to bring her back, mouth to mouth, for 45 minutes to an hour, and that she never breathed. Then, his lawyer asks the question everyone in the room is waiting for. What he says next is on the court recording. [00:06:28] Speaker 5: Why didn't you call 911? [00:06:32] Naresh Bhatt: That's the, I really, at that point, scared. I don't know why I did not. I tried to call. I really scared. I don't know why. Something take over me. I was really, really panicked. [00:06:46] Speaker 1: His lawyer asks what he was afraid of. His lawyer asks if he was afraid of being blamed for her death and for not taking it seriously. Yes, he says, 100%. What he says happened next, he describes in court in plain words. We'll keep to those words and no further. He says he drops the baby at the babysitter's. Then, he drives to a Home Depot. On the way, he says, he saw people pulling their trash cans to the curb and realized it was trash day. Why? To find anything to hide a body, he tells the jury. He buys gloves. Asked why, he says, I have no idea why I buy that. A Home Depot employee testified he paid for those gloves in cash. That day at Lidl, store records show, he bought extra strong 30-gallon trash bags on Mamta's own rewards account, a Lidl manager told the jury. Then, the saw. At some point, his lawyer asks, did you start to cut her body? He tells the jury he used a saw. He says the remains went into kitchen trash bags, into the trash can in his garage, and out to the curb on trash day. Nowhere else, he says. Not in the car. The bags he's seen on camera throwing into apartment dumpsters, he tells the jury, held her clothes, her shoes, food, and papers. His lawyer asks him plainly, did he do it so her body would never be found? Yes, he says. Before the end, his lawyer asks about regret. Not calling 911, he says, is a regret. What he did to her body, he says, is the biggest regret. And lying to everyone? Also a regret. Then, his lawyer closes with three questions. Listen to how he answers the last one. [00:08:29] Speaker 5: Did you defile the dead body of your wife? [00:08:35] Naresh Bhatt: Yes. [00:08:35] Speaker 4: Did you defile the dead body of your wife? [00:08:43] Naresh Bhatt: Yes. No, not even imagination. [00:08:50] Speaker 1: Two of the three charges, he has just told the jury, yes. The third, the one that carries the most, he says no. Then it's the prosecution's turn. Deputy Commonwealth's attorney, Matthew Sweet. This is the moment from the beginning, as the courtroom heard it. [00:09:09] Speaker 6: You're a liar. Yes. [00:09:15] Speaker 2: Order. Not doing that. [00:09:18] Speaker 1: What comes right after is a list. He starts with Mamta's mother and her brother. To each one, Butt answers yes. Then the police. The officer who took his report. The two officers who came to check on her. The detective. One after another, he answers yes. [00:09:35] Speaker 7: You're an admitted liar to this entire jury. Everybody in this room knows now that you are a liar. [00:09:45] Naresh Bhatt: That is the only one thing I lied. [00:09:47] Speaker 1: The only thing he lied about, he says, is this case. Sweet's next job is to find out how much of his news story holds. He starts with the poison. Butt says the packet came from Nepal. It was Mamta's, he says, and he never used it himself. Sweet asks him what that means. Sweet asks if that means Mamta flew from Nepal to the United States carrying poison. I did not say that, Butt answers. And where was it kept? Usually on the top shelf of a closet, he says. That morning, he says, he found it on the bottom one. Then Sweet asks how he could see a powder in vomit. Watch how the answer changes. Sweet asks how a powder could be seen in vomit when powder soaks into fluid. You can see it, Butt says, if you look carefully. Then Sweet comes back to the hour he spent trying to save her, and the call he never made. Sweet asks if it never once crossed his mind to call 911. It came later, Butt says. He was scared. He panicked. And then, an exchange that most of the reporting from that day left out. It's on the court recording. [00:10:53] Speaker 6: Did you feel responsible for her death? [00:10:57] Speaker 1: Yes. [00:10:57] Speaker 6: You are a contributor to her death, correct? [00:11:01] Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Sweet told him plainly. On that night, only two people could have put poison in Mamta. Either she did it herself, or he did. [00:11:11] Speaker 8: And you're saying you did not poison her? [00:11:14] Speaker 1: Never. [00:11:15] Speaker 8: Never? [00:11:16] Speaker 1: Never. Then Sweet turns to Mamta's own words. On the 11th of December, 2023, months before she disappeared, Mamta sends her husband photos of her face, prosecutors told the jury. They showed them in court. We won't. Underneath, she writes, this is the second time. Sweet asks what that line means. It's the second time, Butt says. Asked if it means the second time he injured her, he says no. His reply to her that day was about divorce. [00:11:49] Speaker 2: And as soon as she says to you, this is the second time, you don't ask, how you doing? Are you okay? You're saying to her, I'll sign the divorce papers. [00:11:59] Naresh Bhatt: Yes. [00:11:59] Speaker ?: Yes. [00:12:00] Speaker 1: Yes. He never touched her, he tells the jury. She fell down the stairs. He wasn't even there when it happened, he says. He was upstairs. She was downstairs. As per her, he says, she fell on the last stairs, wearing a jacket. Then, February 2024. Mamta called the police on him, Sweet says, because he was holding her documents, the papers she needed to become a United States citizen. If she'd become a citizen, Sweet says, she'd have been free of him. [00:12:30] Naresh Bhatt: She already have 10 years of permanent resident card. Even like she doesn't need citizen to be free. [00:12:35] Speaker 1: Sweet tells him he made sure she never became one. No, Bott says, that's your perception. Then Sweet moves to March 2024, four months before she disappeared. The investigator who read his phone testified to two searches. What happened if spouse disappears? And what happened if spouse disappears in divorce in Virginia? Sweet reads out the search from March 21st and asks if it was about Mamta. Not necessarily, Bott says. Sweet isn't finished with that answer. Bott says he searches a lot of things. Sweet says he only cares about these two. None of it, Bott says, is related to Mamta. Remember what he said about the night. Up with the baby around 12 and around 4. And at 4, he says, he found her. Earlier in the trial, the prosecution's digital investigator, Catherine Zymus, had walked the jury through what his phone recorded that night. [00:13:35] Speaker 9: On July 30th, 2024, there was a search that was indexed on the phone at 12, 13 a.m. for a human brain diagram. [00:13:47] Speaker 1: Indexed, she said. The prosecutor asks her what that means. Is that the moment someone typed it? Asked if that is when the search was made, she says yes. At 12, 13, the search term was entered by the user. 12, 13, almost four hours before he says he found her. On the stand, Sweet asks him about that hour. What Bott says next matters. [00:14:11] Speaker 6: But didn't you wake up before 4 a.m.? [00:14:15] Speaker 1: Yes. [00:14:16] Speaker 6: That's when you were looking up the anatomy of the human brain, right? [00:14:21] Speaker 1: Sweet tells him he'd already said yes to that search on direct. The defense objects. That wasn't the answer. Sweet moves on. So this is where it stands. He agrees he was up before 4. He says he doesn't remember the search. And he told the jury the baby usually wakes him around midnight. The investigator testified to a second search on his phone that morning. At 8.13, chicken farm near me. Asked about it, Putt says he doesn't recall whether he searched it that day. And he gives a reason. [00:14:54] Naresh Bhatt: Usually I buy chicken from chicken farm. I never buy chicken from grocery stores. [00:14:59] Speaker 1: Sweet suggests it was on his mind after he found his wife dead on the floor. No, Putt says. There's one more search the jury heard about from the week after. The 5th of August, 2024, at 10.24 in the morning. Missing person finding rate in Virginia. On direct, his own lawyer asked him about that one. On direct, his own lawyer asked him about it. He said there's a high possibility he made that search. And asked if, at that point, he was worried about getting caught? He said yes. Around the same time, his lawyer said, he searched for a police station near him. He told the jury he needed the address to give to a friend. Then, the bedroom. State scientists testified most of the blood found in the bedroom carpet was very likely Mumtha's. Sweet asks about the cleaning. Sweet asks if it was easy to clean her blood out of the rug. Mentally, it wasn't easy, Putt says. Physically, it was easy. Her phone, he says, he dropped down a drain. And then, Sweet asks the question the courtroom remembered. Sweet asks if that is the kind of love he showed his wife. Putt says, I know that's not love. Near the end, Sweet goes back to where this story started. Where Putt was born. He told the jury New Delhi. On his citizenship application, Sweet says, he wrote Nepal. Asked if he told the United States government he was born in Nepal, he says yes. Sweet calls it a lie. It's not a lie, Putt says. It's a culture. That is the prosecution's case against his story. The defense has its own points, and the jury will hear them. There is still no body. Police searches found no remains. And there's no confession to murder. He has admitted only what he says he did after she was already dead. Many of the searches on his phone have no timestamp at all, his lawyers pointed out. So nobody can say when or why they were made. One of them came up when the defense questioned the investigator. That is correct, the investigator said. No timestamp. A state DNA scientist said she could not tell when or how the blood in that house was left there. The blood pattern analyst said the marks in the bedroom could come from something dragged across the carpet. She also said moving furniture or cleaning with a wet cloth could leave a similar pattern. A tenant testified that Bot asked him to help move the bed before police arrived. And Bot says he moved Mamta himself to the bathroom to try to give her water. And on the poison, it's his word. He says she took it herself. On cross, he agreed only two people could have given it to her. Mamta or him. Sweet saved one detail for last. The investigator had found it on his phone. By February 2024, Mamta's number was saved in his phone under a new name. She testified that on the 15th of February 2024, the contact was changed. And at that point, it read, Bad Memory, with a running emoji. Sweet puts the name to him. Yes, Bot says. Bad Memory ran away. But asked if he changed her name to it, he says no. And then the last question of the cross-examination. [00:18:25] Speaker 8: Last question. Because of what you've done to Mamta, you are now always going to be the Bad Memory of life. [00:18:36] Speaker 1: While he testified, NBC4 reported, a few jurors didn't appear to believe him. Some rolled their eyes. One could be heard laughing. At one point, Mamta's mother left the courtroom. Outside court that afternoon, one of Mamta's friends called him a monster, WJLA reported. Court resumes on Monday, the 9th of November, 2026. The defense plans to finish with him, call one more witness and rest. Both sides are expected to rest that day. Before the jury goes out, the judge has approved an instruction. If jurors don't find first-degree murder proved, they may consider second-degree murder. After both sides rest come the closing arguments. Then, the jury gets the case. He has told them yes to hiding her, and yes to what he did to her body. His plea is still not guilty, on all three. Until a jury decides, he is presumed innocent. Twelve jurors now have to decide which of his stories, if any, they believe. The one he told for two years? Or the one he told them under oath, the day a prosecutor called him a liar, and he said yes.