GUILTY: Naresh Bhatt convicted of murdering wife Mamta Kafle Bhatt

All right, is there anything we need to do before we bring in the jurors? Thank you very much. You got it. Yes. Welcome back. It's my understanding that you have reached a verdict. All right, I'll have the clerk. Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict in the case that we've ordered? Yes. Is this your unanimous verdict? Yes. Naresh.bot, the Commonwealth of Virginia versus Naresh.bot. CR 2400-2302-00, we the jury find the accused Naresh Dot Bot guilty of transporting, secreting, concealing, or altering a dead body. Signed for person juror number 79, dated November 10th, 2026. Commonwealth of Virginia versus Naresh Dot Bot In CR 2400-3076-00, the jury find the accused Naresh Dot Bot, guilty of first-degree murder, signed for person juror number 79, dated November 10, 2026. Commonwealth of Virginia v. Naresh Dot Bot in CR 2400-3077-00. We, the jury, find the accused Naresh Dot Bot, guilty of physically defiling a dead human body, signed four-person juror number 79, dated November 10th, 2026. All right, you can have a seat. Any motions with regard to the jury verdict? All right, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I want to thank you for your service. This has been a very long period of time, and you've done something that nobody else has been required That's what I'm required to do, and that's to not... Decompress by discussing what you've heard with absolutely anybody for six weeks. And I know that's a heavy ask and I know it takes its toll. And I want to tell you how grateful I am for your service and let you know that you are now free of that. But, um. With that comes the caveat. It's not unusual for the lawyers to reach out to jurors to find out what they were thinking. I want you to know that you are absolutely free, and they will respect it if you tell them you don't want to talk to them, okay? They're not doing anything wrong, but you do not need to talk to anybody, and nobody's going to hound you about that, right? I'm going to have you return your jury badges here, and Kim, if you want to hand them, what else do you need to give them as they leave? We appreciate your service, and you're free to go. We do need to schedule a sentencing date. How much time do you all expect this to take? Once we actually select a judge, before these That's right, Judge, I think a half day. A half day? I can do that. So normally a pre-sentence report is going to take 3 months. I understand that... You had indicated that some of your witnesses are looking to get back to Nepal. If you need me to ask somebody to rush it, I can, but... I cannot be ready to do the sentencing. I have March at 1 o'clock. That's a Friday. Or I can do March 11th. I would also do that at 1 o'clock. You know, I normally do my Thursday sentencings at 9, so I'd reserve the entire afternoon then for this. I do have a jury March 1, 2, 3. Um, that might go into four and then I have a jury March 9th, 10 to keep going to the 11th. I'm happy to go on the 12th. That's not my normal Friday, but I can do that. Does that work? Commonwealth? No problem. I'll Are we starting in the afternoon, Judge? Yes. Uh, what I'll do is I'll schedule that to start at one o'clock. I'm going to go ahead and revoke any bond that Mr. Mr. Bott may have otherwise had, you're going to need to. Cooperate with the pre-sentence report. I will, Ms. Lennox, it's probably best if both of us contact probation and let them know that he'll need a Nepali interpreter for filling out that report. We, of course, need Nepali interpreters available for the hearing on March 12th. Full contact probation officer. Great. Yes. Long-form pre-sentence report. All right, is there anything else we need to do? All right, thank you. President, orderly fashion, please. And you were listening in to the sentencing, Judge Kimberly Irving, scheduling sentencing now Naresh Bhatt, convicted of first-degree murder and other counts in the murder and dismembering of his wife, Mamta Kafel. Yeah, a case that had spanned six weeks and that we had seen Naresh Bhatt take the stand in his own defense. And in closing arguments today, the prosecution saying he is a liar. And clearly, the jury, after three hours, four hours of deliberations, they started at 1 p.m., they came back just about 5 o'clock this afternoon. They did not believe that story. And now he faces. This is up to life in prison. The judge had allowed for a secondary conviction, if they wanted to, of second-degree murder as opposed to first-degree, which would mean premeditated. But as you heard there, the jury unanimously convicting him of first-degree murder. Homa Bash has been in court throughout the day. She was in that courtroom as we saw a stoic Naresh Bhatt receiving that information from the jury. Homa. Marina, Jim, it has been a long six weeks, and in fact, it has been an even longer two-plus years since Mamta Kafel was last seen. And I can tell you, this courtroom, every single day of this trial, has been packed with her family, her friends, supporters of Mamta, people who didn't know her but feel a connection to her story. There have been so many family members that have flown over from her home country of Nepal to be in this courtroom. The judge had to call an end to And to how many people could be allowed in for this verdict, there were so many people Many people gathered in the hallway just listening, and they cheered when the jury convicted Naresh Bhatt of first-degree murder. As you said, he's also convicted now of defiling a corpse, decomposing and concealing her body. It was July 2024 when Mamta Kaful, 28-year-old nurse, went missing. She left an 11-month-old baby at home just weeks away, her baby daughter, Nima, from turning a year old when Mamta was last seen. And for two years, Naresh Bhatt had said that he didn't know what happened to his wife and in the last days of this trial he took three days on the stand in his own defense and he admitted that he cut up her body, he disposed of her body in various trash cans, various dumpsters. We saw throughout the course of this trial surveillance videos and images of him putting on gloves and throwing pieces of garbage, what we now know were pieces of her body into Into dumpsters around Prince William County. And as you said, it took jurors only four hours. To convict him in this case, and so many people today are breathing a sigh of relief. We'll see what that sentencing that is now, for now, scheduled in March will hold, but it has been a long time, a long emotional trial. We heard some very gruesome details, very grotesque details throughout this course. We heard about his internet searches, what happens when you divorce somebody, what happens if you are able to donate your baby. Those are some of the searches that we heard the prosecution say Naresh Bhatt had been doing In the months leading up to this, Leading up to Mamta's disappearance and today during their closing argument saying that this was premeditated not just for weeks, not just for days, but for months, months before her disappearance. And I don't know if you can hear behind me right now, people are starting to file out of that courtroom and they're cheering, they're cheering this guilty verdict. Homa, here's what we're going to do. I know that's happening behind you right now. We'll let you go get reaction if that's necessary. And we'll check back in with you in a little bit. In the meantime, we've had a whole team of reporters covering this trial, including Artisha Lewis, who's here in studio with us. Last week, that moment where he admitted to dismembering, which seemed it caught so many people off guard that he admitted to that. That was an extraordinary moment in this case. Yeah, a huge pivot in this case. And you can hear We hear the courtroom gasp when he had that admission, and at the time we spoke with a trial attorney who's familiar with the legal teams in this case, when that happened, and he called it an act of desperation, at least on Naresh Bhatt's behalf. Part because for weeks and even years, even he said he didn't know what happened to his wife. He didn't know where she was. He, you know, had no answers. And there were so many questions about what exactly took place. And then last week he made that bombshell testimony, admitting to dismembering Mamta Kapilibhatt in the couple's. bathtub in their home next to their master bedroom. And so obviously that was a huge turning point in this case. You know, I have been in the trial along with my colleagues, Stephanie Ramirez and Homa on day one when they selected the jury. I never saw a jury pool that large. They had to narrow down the jury pool for someone who could commit to seven weeks of this trial. It looks like it's ending a little bit earlier than it was initially planning to go. No, but even so, guilty on all counts. And it was 12 jurors. There were 17 alternates. And it was really a melting pot of jurors in that courtroom that were listening to testimony that was often very hard to listen to, especially when you talk about. Him dismembering his wife's body and throwing it in trash bins across northern Virginia and those plastic bags and hearing from the experts and all of the blood that was found in the home. There was so much overwhelming evidence. And so when he came out last week, again, with that alarming account of what happened or what he says happened, saying that his wife, Mamta, took her own life and then he dismembered her body, obviously the jurors did not buy that narrative. And it shows today with the verdict. Yeah, a reasonable doubt, right? That's the onus of the government. And certainly he tried to show that there was doubt. But again, there was not the through line here, which was something that even the defense Pence had tried to guide when they brought on a second. A psychiatrist who tried to mount this case that Naresh Bhatt was suffering from PTSD after discovering his dead wife's body laying on the bed. And somehow that is what led him. To quite literally, which is what he described on the stand, was chopping up his wife's body, dismembering the top part from the legs and how he went about that. And very gruesome and graphic details, which I think the jury tried to sit with and not to talk about someone's behavior. But that also said, just like we saw him stoic at the response of that verdict, he was also incredibly stoic while on the stand. And again, lawyers can now parse together what worked, what didn't work. But the government strategic and the. In their seven weeks that they had proposed to the judge of laying the coursework and the groundwork for this trial, they wanted to have 100 government witnesses, the judge at times saying, that's not going to work, that's too much, condense this trial, prove your case, make it happen, and they so were effective, as we saw with the convictions today. You were having these conversations on the DMV zone in the afternoon all throughout the course of the trial. I'm thinking back to when she first went missing and how you had a very concerned community, friends, family members. members, they were searching For him, or for her, rather, and there was a question about what he knew and when he knew it, but the reality is, for a long while, and I know you covered this angle of the story, Tisha, I mean, this was personal for so many people to get these answers, and as it turns out, you know, he was right in front of them the whole time. He knew all along, and that's what the prosecution pointed to, especially after last week's testimony. They painted him as a liar, and they Named and listed all of the people that he lied to, and I think that that was a powerful moment for the jury to hear and to see and to understand that while the community was grieving and while the community was searching for this young mother, this pediatric nurse, her husband knew the whole time what happened to her and was promoting this lie that he was promoting. And I think that that is... Something that was really tough for the jury to reconcile. Right, absolutely. When the investigators first showed up at that home, and we've seen that body cam footage so many times, when they knock on the door and he alleges that his wife is missing, that maybe she's traveled out of the state because they were having relationship issues, and then they come back and he tells a different story, and time and time again, when investigators try to piece together a timeline of this missing mother, a missing woman, a 28-year-old mother, A father who all friends had said would never. Leave her daughter. And yet he could never provide the same answer. It was always something else. And now we know what happened and who killed Montecolfo. When we heard towards the end the sentencing, there was always the back and forth. Any trial, you have the back and forth of when they can get the sentencing done. As you just saw on screen, March 12th is when that is slated for. And in terms of what sort of punishments he'll see, I mean, first degree murder, it's as tough as it gets. Yeah, life in prison is the maximum sentence. Those lesser charges, right, the defiling, the dismembering of the body, some of the defense. attorneys that I'd spoken with on the DMV zone had said to concede to that would say, well, if we can plant reasonable doubt on that top murder charge, on that murder one, then he won't spend the rest of his life behind bars. But if he concedes those two lesser charges up to 10 years per charge, then maybe give and take with good behavior, it's less than 20 years. And for someone who's middle-aged, that means that you could still have freedom at some point in your life. But clearly, the jury not buying that story. And with that first-degree murder charge, which they could have also convicted on a second-degree murder charge, They have now presented the avenue for that life behind bars for Naresh Bhatt. And we saw and we heard from the judge trying to figure out a date on the calendar. And so many of the family members there of Mamta traveling from Nepal for this case, hoping to be here for the sentencing. But that now will get extended into the spring of 2027.