Naresh Bhatt testified on Thursday that he dismembered his wife’s body after finding her dead on the bedroom floor of their home in Virginia in July 2024, but stopped because he lacked the physical strength to continue.

Bhatt made the disclosure while testifying in his trial at Prince William County Circuit Court in the United States, where he faces charges of first-degree murder, concealing a dead body and defiling a dead body in connection with the disappearance of his wife, Mamta Kafle Bhatt.

According to Fox 5, Bhatt told the court that he found his wife on the morning of July 30, 2024, with vomit on her face and on the bedroom floor. He testified that the vomit contained blood, food particles, pill capsules and evidence of Celphos, a highly potent agricultural fumigant used to kill insects.

Bhatt said he touched his wife, tried to speak to her and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), along with other attempts to save her, before deciding to cut her body into pieces. He said he first tried to separate her legs from her torso.

He told the court that he moved her body to the bathroom but abandoned the dismemberment that day because he did not have the physical strength to continue.

Bhatt also testified that he blocked the bedroom door with a baby changing station before attending to the couple’s infant daughter, whom he picked up, fed and put to sleep.

He said he could not sleep that night. Asked whether he had entered the room the family used for prayer, Bhatt told the court he had not because he was scared.

His wife’s body has never been recovered. Bhatt has remained in custody since his arrest on August 22, 2024, and has pleaded not guilty.

Mamta, a native of Nepal, moved to Northern Virginia in 2021. She was last seen at work on July 27, 2024. Her last known contact was a video call with her mother in Nepal on July 29. Her phone and social media accounts went silent in the days that followed.

Police visited the couple’s home in Manassas Park on August 2, 2024, after her colleagues raised concerns about her disappearance. Bhatt told officers that the couple were separating and that she might have gone to visit relatives in New York or Texas. Police later established that she had no biological family in the United States.

Bhatt filed a missing persons report on August 5, saying his wife had threatened to leave and had suggested a divorce.

Police arrested him on August 22 after searching the house and finding bloodstains in the couple’s bedroom and bathroom. Investigators also recovered a power saw containing hair fragments.

Prosecutors allege that Bhatt killed his wife on or about July 30, dismembered her body and disposed of her remains in trash bags.

The case has drawn attention in Nepal and among Nepali communities abroad. It centres on whether circumstantial and forensic evidence can establish that a killing took place when the victim’s remains have never been found.