4 shops checked; cops look to trace weapon purchase

NEW DELHI: Aaftab Poonawala, accused of killing his girlfriend Shraddha Walkar in May, has so far taken investigating teams to at least four different shops over 10 days, claiming that he bought the weapons he allegedly used to chop her body from these stores, officers aware of the matter said on Monday.

According to police officers investigating the grisly murder, Poonawala’s claims about the stores are similar to the reportedly “misleading statements” he made about the spots where he dumped Walkar’s body parts after allegedly murdering her on May 18 in a tworoom rented flat at Chhattarpur Pahadi where they had moved in three days earlier.

Senior police officers aware of the matter confirmed that Poonawala had pointed them to four stores. However, officers authorised to speak to the media did not offer a statement on record.

Poonawala has told police that he used more than one weapon to dismember Walkar’s body, the officers cited above said.

HT reported last week that the police have recovered a saw from his flat, though they are yet to establish if it was used in the crime. In a statement on Friday, the police confirmed that they have retrieved “multiple exhibits” from his flat. They are, however, yet to reveal what these exhibits are.

The police were initially focussing on just one shop near Chhattarpur

market in south Delhi, called Home and Kitchen, where Poonawala allegedly bought a weapon on May 19, a day after the murder. “Right from day one, he has been misleading the police and taking teams to different places in search of the bodies or the weapons. After we searched forested areas in Chhattarpur Pahadi, he said he disposed of her body parts in Gurugram as well,” said the officer, adding that narco and polygraph tests will help police tie up the several loose ends that have emerged in the case.

The suspect also told the police that he disposed of some body parts in a lake in south Delhi’s Maidangarhi, prompting police to empty out the water body as part of their search.

Poonawala has told the police that he dismembered the body on May 19 and 20, and then spent the next three months routinely leaving home after midnight to dispose of the body parts in forested areas in south Delhi and Gurugram.

HT spoke to owners of two of the four stores that the suspect allegedly bought weapons from, both of whom confirmed that police teams visited them over the past 10 days or so.