A Manassas Park murder trial took a dramatic turn on Thursday, November 5, 2026, when Naresh Bhatt, 39, testified in his own defense and admitted he dismembered his wife’s body and placed the remains in household trash bags. He claimed he found 28-year-old Mamta Kafle unresponsive in their bedroom in the early morning hours of July 30, 2024, and believed she had died by suicide.
Bhatt has been on trial in Prince William Circuit Court since early October on charges of first-degree murder, concealing a dead body, and defiling a dead body. He has pleaded not guilty. Mamta, a nurse at UVA Health Prince William Medical Center in Manassas and the mother of the couple’s infant daughter, disappeared in late July 2024. Her body has never been found. Community searches, blood-stained carpet recovered from the home, and other circumstantial evidence have formed the prosecution’s case. Prosecutors allege he killed Kafle and then dismembered and disposed of her body. Those remain allegations; the jury has not returned a verdict.
Watch the full breakdown:
In earlier statements to police, Bhatt insisted his wife did not return from work and that he did not know where she was. On the stand Thursday — his second day of testimony — he told jurors he woke around 4 a.m., discovered her on the floor, attempted CPR and chest compressions for roughly 55 minutes, and even tried giving her water. He said he panicked, feared he would be blamed, and never called 911.
According to Prince William Times reporting on the testimony, he later purchased supplies, considered other disposal methods, and ultimately cut her body apart in the bathtub so it would fit in the trash bin. He testified he placed the remains in three kitchen trash bags, put the bin at the curb on collection day, and knew the truck would take everything away. He also described discarding her clothing, shoes, paperwork, and other belongings at a dumpster near the babysitter’s apartment and a trash compactor in Falls Church.
The Virginia Insider host walks through that reporting and the contradictions. Why no frantic 911 call in a Northern Virginia home with 24-hour emergency services? Why dismember a body and dispose of it in the trash if the death was a suicide? Bhatt said he had undergone more than 3,500 hours of meditation in the preceding two years yet still could not explain the failure to call for help. The host does not buy the account.
Mamta’s mother, Gita Kafle, was in the packed courtroom and bent over her seat as the admission came. Jurors showed little visible reaction, according to courtroom reporting. The trial continues. For updates, visit VirginiaInsider.com and sign up for the free email newsletter.
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