COUPLE MET ON DATING APP IN 2019, WORKED IN SAME STORE

NEW DELHI: Aaftab Amin Poonawala, 28, who allegedly murdered his live-in partner Shraddha Vikas Walkar, 27, at their south Delhi flat, first met her in Maharashtra’s Vasai through a dating app in 2019, a police officer aware of the investigation said on Monday.

Police said the couple started working at a sports equipment store in Mumbai, and by end of 2019, had started living together in Vasai, despite opposition from both sets of parents.

On May 18, Poonawala allegedly killed Walkar. Additional deputy commissioner of police (south) Ankit Chauhan said that Poonawala, during interrogation, confessed to murdering Walkar because she had been asking him to marry her.

However, Walkar’s father Vikas Madan Walkar has said in the FIR registered in Maharashtra that the two met at a call centre that both worked at in 2019.

Meanwhile, the couple’s friends claimed the first signs of strains in the relationship began due to their parents’ opposition to the relationship. “Both had lost faith with each other,” said one friend, asking not to be named.