Aaftab points to pond for body parts of Walkar, police search it
NEW DELHI: Aaftab Amin Poonawala — who is alleged to have murdered his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar this May and dismembered her remains and scattered them across Mehrauli, Chhattarpur and Gurugram — has told the police that he disposed of some of her body parts in a pond in Maidan Garhi, said officers aware of the matter, prompting investigators on Sunday to begin draining the south Delhi water body, even as the police said they recovered what appeared to be pieces of a skull from a forest in Chhattarpur.
The bones will be sent for forensic tests to ascertain if they are of human origin and belong to Walkar, said officers.
On Sunday, Delhi Police teams and officers from the city’s municipal corporation and water utility made their way to the Mahadhudi pond in Maidan Garhi village, barely 500 metres from the rented Chhattarpur Pahadi flat where Walkar was allegedly killed.
NEW DELHI: Receipts from a home relocation company show Aaftab Poonawala, who is accused of murdering his partner Shraddha Walkar in May in Delhi, booked a consignment from his Mumbai residence to the Capital, officials said as they attempt to piece together the sequence of events around a crime that has yielded little evidence till now.
Investigators from the Delhi Police’s Mehrauli station recorded the statements of Good Luck Packers and Movers in Mumbai’s Mira road on Sunday, according to people aware of the matter. Among the information that officers were looking for were any clues to the contents of the 37 packages that were sent days after the purported murder, who paid the ₹20,000 bill and whether the consignment was sent to the Chhattarpur home where the couple lived or to another location in Delhi.
Poonawala, during his questioning, is understood to have told investigators that the payment for the relocation was one of the subjects of their fights, which people who knew the couple said would often include physical assaults.
Walkar’s remains have not yet been confirmed to have been found, but police are analysing bones they picked up from certain sites in and around Mehrauli and Chhattarpur, where Poonawala reportedly told the police that he disposed off the body after dismembering it into 35 pieces. According to local police in Manikpur in Mumbai who were part of the questioning, the statements of Jayshree Patkar, the owner of the flat at Regal Apartments in Mumbai where Poonawala and Walkar lived together in 2021, was also questioned.