PAGE COUNTY, Va. — Authorities are focusing their search for a missing Manassas Park wife and mother on the Battle Creek Landfill in Luray.
Mamta Kafle Bhatt, 28, was last seen on July 27, 2024, after she finished her shift as a nurse at UVA Health Prince William Medical Center in Manassas.
According to reports, authorities performed a welfare check on Mamta on August 2, but her husband, Naresh Bhatt, did not inform them that his wife was missing. He later reported her as missing on August 5, claiming that he last saw her on July 31.
Investigators suspect that Naresh, 37, may have killed Mamta, dismembered her body, and disposed of it in the trash. Three weeks after her disappearance, authorities arrested Naresh and charged him with concealing a dead body.
TIMELINE:
July 27: Mamta was last seen alive
August 2: Police responded to a welfare check at Mamta’s residence. Naresh claimed Mamta left voluntarily and had gone to New York or Texas.
August 5: Naresh officially reported Mamta as missing to the police.
August 5-8: The case was elevated to “involuntary/critical missing.”
August 21: Police executed a search warrant at the couple’s home and discovered evidence of a significant amount of blood. Naresh was declared a “person of interest.”
August 22: Naresh arrested and charged with concealing a dead body.
December: Naresh indicted on charges of murder and defiling the body of Mamta
On March 20, 2025, FOX5DC staffer Stephanie Ramirez reported an exclusive conversation with Manassas Park Police Chief Mario Lugo.
Investigators had already searched the couple’s home, backyard and various trash sites in the Northern Virginia area.
Lugo told FOX 5 that with the help of county departments and the FBI, they are now “focused on a landfill site in Page County.”
“That’s where most of the trash, I believe, has gone, that we believe went there based on what we’re being told,” Chief Lugo told FOX5DC, “but they can’t tell us where exactly these big dump trucks took the trash and dumped it after it was picked up.
“I guess most of the trash in Northern Virginia goes to a distribution site where it gets filtered through, load-up on these trucks, these trucks then take it to the site and dump the trash.
“We can’t tell you which driver, which truck, when it was picked up, when it was dumped. I’m being told chemicals are being put on this stuff. A bulldozer is going back and forth over the trash to flatten it out and take out any stuff that’s not needed in there.”
Just after 4:30 p.m. on March 20, 2025, the Page County Sheriff’s Office in Luray, Virginia released the following statement:
The Page County Sheriff’s Office is committed to assisting the Manassas Park Police Department and the FBI in the search for the remains of Ms. Mamta Bhatt.
As part of the investigation, the search area includes the Page County Landfill, one of several final disposal sites for waste from Northern Virginia waste companies. While the landfill falls within our jurisdiction, the Page County Sheriff’s Office is not the lead agency in this case.
Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by this tragic event. At this time, we are unable to provide further information.
Naresh’s trial is scheduled to begin September 8, 2025.
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December, 2024 – Husband of missing Virginia nurse and mother, charged with murder
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