The Shraddha Walkar murder case has left the nation in shock. Shraddha was allegedly killed by her live-in boyfriend Aftab Ameen Poonawalla, who chopped her body into 35 pieces. The story unraveled over the past month after Shraddha Walkar’s family who hadn’t spoken to her in a year as they didn’t approve of her interfaith relationship went to the police in Vasai in Maharashtra, their hometown near Mumbai, after some friends told him she’d been out of touch for months.
Source- Hindustan
Both worked in call centers and had been living together at least since last year, first near Mumbai, where they had met on dating app Bumble, and then in Delhi since moving here in May this year.
More chilling details in the case have come to light. Sources have told News18 that Aaftab has disclosed that on the second day after strangulating Shraddha, he had removed her intestines and internal organs as they had started to decompose. “This was done to avoid foul smell emanating from the house as that would have raised neighbors’ suspicion. He put the parts in a plastic bag and threw them in garbage dumps,” sources said.
Recently Aftab was fired from his job in Gurugram for being absent without leave, police sources said. He has led investigators to some bones in the Mehrauli jungle; police said they have sent those and her father’s DNA samples to a forensics lab to check if the bones are Shraddha’s. Some bloodstains have also been found from the flat, sources said.
Source- OpIndia
Further investigation into the gruesome case revealed that the accused met a woman via Bumble after the murder and brought her to his house in Chattarpur while the remains were still stored in the refrigerator, the informed sources added. “He was using her Instagram account to avoid any suspicion by her friends,” an official said.
After killing Shraddha, Aaftab operated her bank account app and transferred Rs 54,000. The pending water bill of Rs 300 of Aaftab’s flat proved he used a huge amount of water probably to the blood and any other physical sign of the murder. A Delhi court on Wednesday gave approval to police to conduct a narco-analysis test on Aaftab. The police claimed he was not cooperating during the investigation and made attempts to mislead the officers.
According to reports, Aaftab cut Shraddha’s body in the bathroom. The suspicion arose as he used excess water during the time. He also sold his phone on OLX after killing his 26-year-old live-in partner. . He has been changing his statements, so police intend to conduct a lie-detector test. A psychiatrist has also been engaged to help during interrogation.
Aaftab Poonawala is learnt to have told police officers that they fought regularly for over a year. They eventually ‘broke up’ but “lived as flatmates rather than as a couple”. He said he killed Shraddha some time between 8pm and 9pm on May 18, dragged the body through the kitchen to the bathroom and left it there for the night.
Speaking to news agency ANI on Monday, Rajat Shukla, Shraddha’s friend, said, “Today suddenly the news flashed on the mobile of her murder. I was shaken to the core of my soul that my friend has been murdered. She told us in 2019 that she was in a relationship since 2018. They lived together. Initially, they lived happily, but then Sharddha started saying that Aftab beats her. She wanted to leave him but couldn’t do so.” Rajat said that it had become “very difficult” for her to come out of that relationship, adding that “her life had become like hell”.
