Chintan Upadhyay, husband of deceased Mumbai artist Hema Upadhyay, and three others have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife and her lawyer’s murder in 2015. Additional sessions judge S Y Bhosale of the Dindoshi court on October 5 held Chintan guilty of abetting and conspiring to kill his wife.
Chintan Upadhyay, a celebrated artist, was held guilty under IPC sections 120(B) (criminal conspiracy) and 109 (abutment). Following the conviction, Chintan Upadhyay, who was out on bail, was sent into judicial custody.
Hema Upadhyay Murder Case: Artist Chintan Upadhyay, 3 Others Jailed For Life | Timeline
Who is Chintan Upadhyay?
A Charles Wallace Foundation Award, Chintan Upadhyay, now a murder convict, was once a celebrated artist like his dead wife Hema Updahyay. He began as a painter and later began creating sculptures and installations, the surfaces of which he painted.
His best-known sculpture project is believed to be the Pet Shop project, which is an ongoing production of a “model baby” for every season, a Baby fetish. For these works, Upadhyay collaborated with artist Manish Sharma, a Rajasthani miniatures painter, who covered the babies with his interpretations of Indian miniatures.
Chintan Upadhyay and controversies went hand in hand. While his contentious works often made headlines one of the most prominent controversies was when the artist sat in the buff and asked people to smear him with saffron, thus reclaiming the colour in a ritualistic manner at the height of the Gujarat riots.
The artist courted another controversy when he impersonated a pregnant woman and dressed up in a house dress.
Chintan Upadhyay: Artist-Turned Murder Convict
A Mumbai Court last week found Chinran Upadhyay and three other accused, tempo driver Vijay Rajbhar and helpers Pradeep Rajbhar and Shivkumar Rajbhar, who worked with the absconding accused and art fabricator Vidyadhar Rajbhar, guilty of the double murder.
On Saturday, during the arguments on sentencing, Upadhyay told the court, “My conscience is clear, I have not committed any offence. I’m innocent.”
“However, the court has found me guilty, no mercy should be shown. I’m ready to accept whatever punishment the court decides,” he added.
Chintan met Hema, in 1992 and the couple got married in 1998 and settled in Mumbai. They worked together in many exhibitions, before filing for a divorce in 2010. They were officially divorced in 2014.
Chintan Upadhyay was arrested in December 2015 for allegedly conspiring to eliminate his wife, also an artist. He spent nearly six years in jail before being granted bail by the Supreme Court in September 2021.
Comments
0 comment