4 shops checked so far as 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.
Both also said that it was not possible for them to recall if Poonawala visited their store at all, given that they attend to several customers a day.
Rajan Bansal (34), who owns one of the two shops in Chhattarpur, said he does not have CCTV recordings from May, arguing that
footage is deleted automatically after a month. Police went to his shop “10 or 12 days” ago.
“When the police brought him here, the man claimed he bought two hammers, nails and four small handle-free hacksaws,” he said.
“So many customers come here and they often wear masks. I couldn’t recall his [Poonawala’s] face when I saw him. The police told me that he claimed he bought the tools from my shop,” Bansal added.
Sudeep Sachdeva, owner of Home and Kitchen, also said the police brought Poonawala to his shop, but no one at the store remembered the man. Both have confirmed that police recorded their statements.
So far, in their search for evidence, police have recovered some bones from forests in south Delhi (though it is unclear if these are human remains at all), traces of bloodstains from the suspect’s kitchen, and the fridge where the body parts were allegedly stored. However, forensic checks are vital to establish if these exhibits are linked with the alleged murder and brutal cover-up.
Officers are yet to conduct Poonawala’s narco analysis, though his five-day police custody ends on Tuesday. Further, the police on Monday also sought the court’s permission for a polygraph test on Poonawala to firm up their probe. To be sure, findings of polygraph and narco tests are not prosecutable evidence in court during trial but will help police check if Poonawala is misleading investigators on the facts of the case.
Police have also unearthed CCTV footage from October 18 this year showing a man, purportedly Poonawala, walking down a lane in Chhattarpur with a bag on his back and a box under his arm. It is yet to be conclusively established who the person is and what the bag or box contains.
Meanwhile, on Monday, a local dentist in Chhattarpur, who runs a clinic near Poonawala’s residence, claimed that he was approached by a Delhi Police team on Monday morning. He said they brought with them a photo of a lower human jaw, which they reportedly unearthed during their searches in south Delhi’s forests. The doctor claimed the jaw showed that the person had undergone two rootcanal treatments. This, he said, could be corroborated with Walkar’s dental records.
However, no Delhi Police officer confirmed this approach, and HT has not been able to independently verify the dentist’s claim.