Jury gets first look at critical evidence in Naresh Bhatt's murder trial

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: tonight with the very latest in the Naresh Bhatt murder trial. Court just wrapped up for the day. [00:00:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, Bhatt, as you know, is accused of killing his wife Mamta back in 2024. Her body has never been found. Thank you for being here with us tonight. I'm Lorenzo Hall. And I'm Leslie Foster. [00:00:15] Speaker 1: And a reminder, it can be hard to see and hear some of the details of this case. Today, the jury got some of its first look at the critical evidence in the case. Yeah, our Katie Lesso has [00:00:25] Speaker 2: been following this case since Mamta was first reported missing. She just got out of the courtroom. And Katie, we know a lot has happened in just the last few minutes alone. Update us. [00:00:34] Speaker 3: Yeah, the jurors had a very long day today, court wrapping up around 4.30 this afternoon. And the last 30 to 45 minutes or so, they had physical evidence literally brought into the courtroom, which is the first time we have seen this since the trial began last week. And this evidence that they brought in, these were what are believed to be the blind that they believe were at one point in the master bathroom of Mamta and Naresh's home on Heather Court in Manassas Park. Now, when we had been hearing earlier from the crime scene investigator, who is the one who is kind of explaining all of the evidence we were seeing in the last few hours, she was mentioning that the bathroom lines appeared to be missing from one of the two windows in the bathroom. And she did end up finding a set of blinds in a closet nearby, believed she saw what were possibly blood stains on them. And that is where things left off tonight with jurors expected to return tomorrow to learn more about that piece of evidence and literally seeing those blinds in the courtroom. [00:01:32] Speaker 2: Well, Katie, so clearly a lot of new evidence was presented there in court today. [00:01:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, a ton of evidence was presented to the courtroom and the jurors had to listen carefully. And it was a lot. It was a lot to take in. But the crime scene investigator, Andrea Feldman, she is with the Prince William County Crime Scene Investigation investigation unit at that time. She was called to the home on August 21st of 2024 as part of the search warrant that was being executed at the Heather Court home that was home to Nuresh bought and mom took off labor. And what she was explaining is that she was told to photograph every cleaning item that was in the home. She was told to photograph and collect a variety of pieces of evidence, things like knives that she found in the home, in the kitchen, in other parts of the home, zip ties that she found in one of the the downstairs rooms. There were also photographs shared of a wallet that appeared to be Monta's. There were credit cards inside that had Monta's name on them. And it's important to mention those credit cards were not expired. She did make a point to mention that a lot of cleaning supplies, obviously. And then, you know, they got into that evidence of what she started to see after collecting all of these different items and really a lot of stuff for the jurors to take in. You know, one of the other things, Katie, that we have heard [00:02:52] Speaker 1: from investigators in the past is about something they call a drag mark, which is something that they've called a key indicator. Can you tell us a bit more about that? [00:03:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, and so that's the Blue Star technology. The Blue Star forensics is the the process they were using to try to figure out if there was any actual blood evidence in the home. So she spotted what she believed were these blood stains in various parts of the bedroom and the bathroom. And she decided as part of her team to use what's called Blue Star forensics. And this is a solution that they can spray on areas where they believe there might be blood, and it detects what is possibly blood, possibly cleaned up blood, and it makes it light up. And we had heard yesterday from one of the detectives that she had said when they turned that Blue Star solution, they sprayed the Blue Star solution and turned the lights on. The room lit up. Well, today we were able to see a moment where they were able to see a where they were specifically talking about what may be that drag mark that we've heard investigators referring to in the past. And this is in the bedroom. It appears to be a line of blue fluorescent light from the bathroom to the master bed or possibly the other way around. And then at one point they talked about the bed itself. It had been kind of up against the closet blocking part of the closet and they realized that there was some fluorescent light right under the bottom of the bed. And so they moved the bed sprayed again and then you just see a ton of that blue light. And the investigator explained that everything that is is glowing like that is suspected to be possible bloodstains. [00:04:24] Speaker 4: The bed is in the top left corner with a rocking chair. This opening here at the bottom was the opening to the master bathroom. So in this photograph we're seeing a blue star, bright blue chemical reaction, basically going down the middle of the photograph, either from the bath to the bed or the bed to the bath. [00:04:54] Speaker 3: And I can tell you when that image came up on the screen in the courtroom, I looked over at the jury. I looked over at mom does mother and everyone was watching closely. I saw a bunch of the jurors begin to take notes just furiously. And again, this was a long day. So a lot of them had been getting pretty tired. But this this caught everyone's attention. [00:05:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, this picture that the prosecution is painting and what the jury has to digest here and what and what they saw and they have to interpret for themselves today. Very big day, Katie. Thank you. All right. And as you know, WUSA 9 has been your go to source for this case since Momta was first reported missing again back in 2024. We're going to be in that courtroom every single day. So keep up with our coverage by scanning this QR code on your screen. Updates are always available on our website, WUSA 9.com, our free app and the WUSA 9. YouTube page.