‘Murdered in heat of moment but planned disposal in detail’

NEW DELHI: Three days after they moved into a rented flat in Chhattarpur Pahadi in south Delhi, 28-year-old Aaftab Amin Poonawala and his girlfriend Shraddha Walkar, 27, had a heated argument, said police officers aware of the matter. Poonawala, they said, suspected that Shraddha was involved with another man.

The argument turned into a fight and they even exchanged blows. This purportedly enraged Poonawala so much that he allegedly pinned Walkar to the bed and strangled her to death in a fit of rage and without any prior planning, said the police, quoting Poonawala’s disclosure.

Everything Walkar did later on was planned the night after the murder, said the police.

Poonawala reportedly told the police that removing Walkar’s corpse from the first-floor flat appeared risky, so he decided to cut the body into pieces and dispose the parts across the city.

For this, Poonawala went to a nearby market around 10am on May 19, a day after the murder, and bought a “heavy and sharp weapon” and three metal cutting blades for ₹150 from a kitchen utensils store. He also bought black plastic garbage bags and paid in cash, said the officer.

The weapon could be a hacksaw, a cleaver, or a kitchen knife, said the police.

He then needed to figure out how to preserve the body parts.

“Poonawala visited an appliance shop and bought a refrigerator for ₹19,000 and used an online service to pay. He made sure the labourers who carried the fridge to his house did not enter the flat,” the officer said.

According to his disclosure statement, Poonawala dragged Walkar’s body to the bathroom from the bedroom, removed her clothes, turned on the tap and started chopping up her body with the weapon. After chopping the body, Poonawala allegedly washed all the parts with water and packed them in the bags, which he kept in the fridge.

Around 2am on May 21, he kept one bag with a couple of chopped body parts in his backpack and left the flat. He walked nearly a kilometre and dumped the body parts in a forested area near Chhatarpur Pahadi crematorium. He disposed of the bags in trash bins on the way back to his flat, the police said.

“Poonawala told us that he disposed of the body parts for three months. The last body parts he discarded was the head and parts of her torso. During that period, he got rid of her clothes and dumped them in bins across Chhattarpur,” said the officer. He did the same with his bloodstained clothes and the weapon, which he allegedly threw into a forest near Dhan Mill.

Officers confirmed that Poonawala did not employ a domestic help. To mask the smell from Walkar’s remains, Poonawala told the police that he lit incense sticks across the flat for days.

The police said Poonawala told them he used hypochlorous acid and floor-cleaning chemicals to clean the kitchen, bathroom, the floors, and the fridge.

Investigators said Poonawala told them that after killing Walkar he kept her cellphone on and used her Instagram account to message her friends. He, however, turned down their calls, making excuses every time. After May 31, he switched off her cellphone and threw it into a river while travelling to Mumbai. After returning from Mumbai, he started working at a call centre in Gurugram.

“He also paid off her credit card dues to ensure that nobody suspected she was not alive,” said another investigator, who asked not to be named.

Poonawala also said that a few weeks after the murder, he became active on the dating app through which he met Walkar.

“He told us he met another woman on the app and the two started dating,” said an officer.

She even visited the flat where Walkar was killed, the officer added, after Poonawala was done disposing of any last traces of his previous girlfriend.