Victim’s friend alerted father her phone was off since June

LAKSHMAN NADAR, THE FRIEND, SAID THE COUPLE OFTEN QUARRELLED, AND HE GOT WORRIED WHEN WALKAR DID NOT RESPOND TO HIS CALLS AND MESSAGES

MUMBAI: On September 16, Lakshman Nadar, 26, called Shraddha Walkar’s father and told him that her phone was switched off since June and that there was absolutely no activity on her social media accounts.

Nadar, a close friend of Walkar, worked with her at a call centre in Malad in 2019, and the two were in touch till May this year.

After he shared this with Walkar’s father, Vikas Madan Walkar, approached the Manikpur police station in mid-september and filed a complaint that his daughter had gone missing.

On Saturday, the Delhi Police arrested Aaftab Amin Poonawala for the alleged murder of Walkar. Poonawala and Walkar lived together at a rented flat in south Delhi’s Chhattarpur area. According to the Delhi Police, Poonawala first strangled Walkar to death, and then chopped her body into 35 pieces, before disposing of the body over a period of three months in forested areas across Delhi.

According to Nadar, Walkar and Poonawala met on a dating app in 2019. Since their families were opposed to their relationship -- Poonawala is Muslim while Walkar was Hindu -- they rented a place in Naigon East and lived there for around two years, he said.

Nadar said that the couple quarrelled often. “Once in 2020, Shraddha had sent me a message on Whatsapp, telling me that if I did not get her out of her house, Poonawala would kill her. We had warned Poonawala but stopped short of reporting him to the police, as Shraddha told us not to. We respected her wishes and left,” Nadar alleged.

Nadar said he last spoke to Walkar in May. “I got worried when Shraddha did not respond to my messages or returned my calls when I tried to reach her in July, and then August,” he said.

Walkar briefly returned to her house on January 10, 2020, after her mother, Harshala, died of a prolonged illness, According to Nadar, she stayed at her Vasai residence for 15 days and then returned to Poonawala.

According to Sampat Patil, senior police inspector at Manikpur police station, Vikas Walkar approached them on September 17 and submitted an application claiming that his daughter was missing. “We did not know whether the woman stayed in Mumbai or elsewhere,” Patil said.

According to Vikas Walkar’s statement to the police, he lived with his wife and daughter near GG College in Vasai village. In 2019, his daughter Shraddha began working at a call centre in Malad and came in contact with Aaftab Poonawala, a resident of Deewan Maan area in Vasai West.

“We immediately formed a team and retrieved the call detail records of the couple for the last one year,” said Patil. During investigations, the Mumbai Police found that Walkar’s phone and bank accounts were inactive since May, he added.

“We called Poonawala to the police station to question him, but he said that he had shifted to Chhattarpur area in Delhi in March. He also said that the couple had a fight, and Walkar broke up with him,” said Patil.

Since Poonawala’s statements were not consistent, the Mumbai Police checked the call detail records of Walkar and found that the location of both Poonawala, and the last known detail of Walkar were in the same area.

“Therefore, we tipped off the Chhattarpur police with a request to investigate the matter further,” said Patil.

On Saturday,. inspector Dilip Samant of the Manikpur police, along with the Delhi Police tracked down Poonawala and detained him, after which the Delhi Police interrogated him and claimed to have cracked the case.