MAN CHOPS GIRLFRIEND INTO 35 PIECES IN DELHI
NEW DELHI: A 28-year-old man allegedly murdered his girlfriend six months ago, chopped her body into 35 pieces for over two days, stored them in a refrigerator for about three months, and dumped the body parts piece by piece in different parts of south Delhi, police said on Monday, claiming to have solved a murder and cover-up that could be among the most gruesome in the Capital’s case files.
Even as police said that Aaftab Amin Poonawala has confessed to the murder, investigators are yet to establish if 13 pieces of decomposed bones that they have recovered in their search operations actually belong to Shraddha Vikas Walkar, 27. In the absence of any conclusive evidence, the bones have been sent for DNA profiling.
NEW DELHI: A 28-year-old man allegedly murdered his girlfriend six months ago, chopped her body into at least 35 pieces for over two days, stored them in a refrigerator for about three months, and dumped the body parts piece by piece in different parts of south Delhi, police said on Monday, claiming to have solved a murder and cover-up that could be among the most gruesome in the Capital’s case files.
Even as police said that Aaftab Amin Poonawala has confessed to the murder, investigators are yet to establish if 13 pieces of decomposed bones that they have recovered in their search operations actually belong to Shraddha Vikas Walkar, 27. In the absence of any conclusive evidence to corroborate Poonawala’s alleged confession, the recovered bones have been sent for DNA profiling. Police are also yet to recover the weapon — some officers said it was a hacksaw, others said it was a meat cleaver — he allegedly used to hack the body.
In a murder investigation, it is crucial to find the body and the weapon to prove the case in a court of law as Poonawala’s confession before the police is not admissible as evidence in court.
On Monday afternoon, police teams fanned across different parts of the city — particularly the forested areas of Mehrauli and Chhattarpur — searching for the missing body parts. They said Poonawala, who works at a call centre in Gurugram, took investigating officers to three places near the Qutub Minar in Mehrauli, from where 13 pieces of decomposed bones were recovered.
Poonawala and Walkar, originally from Vasai near Mumbai, were in a relationship and had moved to Delhi in May 2022. They moved in together in a flat in south Delhi’s Chhattarpur Pahadi area, police said. Both sets of parents were opposed to the match because Poonawala is a Muslim and Walkar was a Hindu, according to police and relatives. The couple’s family said they met sometime in 2019 while working at a call centre in Vasai. But Delhi Police said the two met on Bumble, a dating app, in early 2019.
The incident came to light on November 8, when Mumbai Police approached Delhi Police saying that Shraddha Walkar’s father, Vikas Madan Walkar, filed a missing complaint about his daughter.
“Shraddha’s father, Vikas, had told Mumbai Police about his daughter’s relationship with Aaftab Amin Poonawala. Both sets of parents were against this relationship. Shraddha was not in touch with her father. Sometime in September, one of her friends told Vikas that he was not able to get in touch with Shraddha for almost two months. Vikas then approached Mumbai Police last month. During their probe, Mumbai Police traced the couple’s last location to the Mehrauli police station area. We summoned Poonawala for investigation. Initially, he said Shraddha had left him after a fight, but later confessed to the crime,” said ADCP (south), Ankit Chauhan.