Nothing was deliberate: Aaftab; No confession yet, says lawyer

NEW DELHI: Aaftab Poonawala, a 28-year-old man accused of murdering his girlfriend Shraddha Walkar and hacking her body into 35 pieces, briefly broke his silence before a Delhi court on Tuesday, said his lawyer, who insisted that his client did not confess to the grisly crime that has shocked the country.

Poonawala was produced before metropolitan magistrate Aviral Shukla, who asked the prime accused if he knew what he had done. “Whatever happened, took place in the heat of the moment and nothing was deliberate,” Poonawala told the judge, according to his lawyer, Avinash Kumar. Poonawala didn’t specify what he was talk

ing about or if it was connected to the alleged crime, Kumar added. “He did not say anything about what he had done. He just said that whatever had happened, anything big or small, was in the heat of the moment and nothing was deliberate.”

Another metropolitan magistrate Vijayshree Rathore, meanwhile, allowed the police application for conducting a polygraph test on Poonawala.