Police collect clothes from accused’s house
NEW DELHI: Delhi Police officials probing the gruesome Shraddha Walkar murder case have taken possession of all the clothes from accused Aaftab Amin Poonawala’s house in South Delhi and they will be sent for forensic examination, officials privy to the matter said on Saturday.
They said the investigators have not recovered the clothes the two were wearing on May 18, the day the crime was executed.
Poonawala allegedly strangled his live-in partner Walkar, 27, and sawed her body into 35 pieces which he kept in a 300-litre fridge for almost three weeks at his house in Mehrauli before dumping them across the city over several days past midnight.
“Delhi Police has taken possession of all the clothes present in Poonawala’s house. These include Walkar’s clothes too. They will be sent for forensic examination,” a source in the police department said.
The police have so far recovered 13 body parts, which are mostly skeletal remains. Poonawala is being taken to different locations in south Delhi to locate more body parts, the source said.
According to officials, the police on Friday recovered some body parts from Gurugram, which will also be sent for forensic examination. Walkar’s head is still missing.
They also said the police have recovered a sharp object from
Poonawala’s house and it will examined whether it was used to chop Walkar’s body.
The Delhi Police had on Friday sent teams to Maharashtra, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh to hunt for evidence in the case, with sleuths recovering some body parts in Gurugram.
A court here has already ordered that narco test be conducted on the accused within five days.
According to officials, after leaving Mumbai, Walkar and Poonawala had travelled to several locations, including Himachal Pradesh, and police are visiting these places to ascertain whether any development during those trips triggered Poonawala to kill his partner.
Meanwhile, A Delhi Police team on Saturday recorded the statements of two men in Maharashtra’s Palghar from whom Walkar had sought assistance after she was assaulted by the accused in 2020, officials said. The team is in Manikpur in Palghar district’s Vasai, which is the native area of the victim and where the couple had stayed before shifting to the national capital.The official identified the two witnesses, whose statements are being recorded as Rahul Ray and Godwin. Both of them are residents of Vasai region. The process of recording the statement of one person was complete and the other’s was in progress, he added.
Giving details of these two witnesses, the official said one of them is a rickshaw driver and the other is currently unemployed.
The four- member Delhi police team, which landed in Mumbai on Friday, had earlier recorded the statement of Shraddha’s friend Laxman Nadar, the official said.