POONAWALA STARTED DATING WEEKS AFTER MURDER: POLICE

NEW DELHI: Days after Aaftab Amin Poonawala purportedly disposed of the last body part of his former girlfriend Shraddha Walkar after allegedly murdering her and dismembering her body, he started dating again and brought at least one woman back to his south Delhi flat, police officers aware of the matter said.

After he managed to dispose of the body, sometime in late August or early September, he started befriending women on the dating app Bumble -- the same app on which he said he first met Walkar -- and brought at least one date back to the flat in Chhattarpur, Poonawalla ostensibly said in his confession.

To be sure, Poonawala’s alleged confession before the police is not admissible as evidence in court.

Officers aware of the development said police will now write to Bumble to get details of who all Poonawala befriended on the app. The details of Poonawala’s profile and activities on Bumble and his call detail records could also help police ascertain if Walkar was killed as a result of his relationship with another person -- based on his confession, police say the murder occurred because Walkar had been pressuring him to marry her.

An officer who questioned he suspect said, “Poonawala has told us that in early 2022, the couple had problems in their relationship. They decided to leave Maharashtra and shift to Delhi, where they could both find jobs. Poonawala said they wanted to save their relationship and thus visited Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand before coming to Delhi in the second week of May.”