Police find more bones, this time in Gurugram

NEW DELHI: Police on Friday recovered some decomposed bone fragments from a Gurugram forest after being led there by Aaftab Amin Poonawala, who is accused of killing his girlfriend Shraddha Walkar and dismembering her body, said an officer aware of the probe, as investigators expanded their search to spots in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where the couple allegedly spent time before moving to the Capital.

Poonawala, one of the officers investigating the case said on condition of anonymity, led a police team to a forested area on MG Road in Gurugram. The team members scanned the forest and found some bones lying under bushes, the officer added.

The officer clarified that while the bones appear to be those of a human, it did not include a skull. The forensic laboratory will have to confirm this, though, he added. The forensic examination, the officer said, will also establish if these bones and bone fragments previously recovered from a drain in a forest near Chhattarpur last Saturday are from the same body. Further tests will be needed to establish if they belong to Walkar.

“The DNA profiling of all the recovered bones will be done and compared with that of Walkar’s father. Our teams are still trying to recover the skull and the weapon that Poonawala claims to have used for dismembering Walkar’s body,” the officer said.

In a statement, Delhi Police said that it was contacted by Mumbai Police on November 9. “The father of the woman told police that she was residing with Aaftab Amin Poonawala in a live-in relationship for the past three years and there was a history of repeated violence emanating from Poonawala,” said the police in a statement. “During investigation, Poonawala was traced, apprehended and interrogated. Initially he tried to mislead investigators by saying she had severed the relationship and left the flat.”

On November 12, a Mehrauli police station team arrested Poonawala after he confessed that he strangled Walkar to death at their rented flat in Chhatarpur Pahadi following a fight on the night of May 18, dismembered her body, stored them in a refrigerator and dumped the body parts over a period of three months. The police interrogated Poonawala after registering a case of kidnapping pertaining to Walkar’s disappearance, based on her father’s complaint to Maharashtra police.

On Thursday, a Delhi court extended Poonawala’s police custody for five days and also granted permission to the police to conduct a narco analysis on him after he gave his consent for the same. In its order, the court directed the police to conduct the test within five days of his extended police custody and advised them not to use any third degree measures.

Police said Poonawala, whose responses they said were “deceptive”, previously confessed that he dumped Walker’s body parts in forested areas near Chhattarpur and Qutub Minar. He took them to the forest near Chhatarpur crematorium from where the police recovered 13 bones from inside a drain. He also took them to a Home and Kitchen store and a consumer goods outlet, Tilak Electronics, at the local market from where he said he purchased a saw and the refrigerator that he allegedly used to chop up Walkar’s body and store the parts.

While the purchase of the fridge from the shop was corroborated by the shopkeeper , the owner of the kitchenware store did not recognise him and claimed that saws were not sold at his shop. On further interrogation, Poonawala claimed to have purchased the weapon from a shop on MG Road, a second police officer associated with the case said, requesting anonymity.

On Thursday night, this officer added, Poonawala admitted to dumping some body parts in a forest in Gurugram.

On Friday morning, the police team took him to the forest in Gurugram. The police also plan to take Poonawala to Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand to establish the entire sequence of events leading to Walkar’s death.