The grisly crime in Delhi has unnerved most of the country. Aaftab Amin Poonawala (28) has been accused of strangling his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar (27), sawing her body into nearly 35 pieces, and dumping them across Delhi over several days. Delhi police arrested Aaftab this week, nearly six months after he allegedly killed Shraddha on May 18. Even as most people struggle to comprehend the gruesome way Shraddha was killed, many unsettling details about the murder have emerged.
Shraddha, who worked at a call centre in Mumbai, met Aaftab on a dating app in 2019, police said. Her father told the police that Shraddha, who earlier lived with her mother and younger brother, left home in 2019 and moved in with Aaftab after a confrontation with her family over their relationship. Shraddha belonged to the Koli community, and both their families reportedly objected to the relationship as they belonged to different faiths. After moving in with Aaftab, Shraddha told her parents and friends on multiple occasions that he had been violent and had physically assaulted her, Indian Express reported.
The two of them moved to Delhi on May 8 this year and rented a flat in the Chhatarpur Pahari area on May 15, three days before Shraddha’s murder, according to The Print. On May 18, an argument broke out between the two. Aaftab told the police he tried to shut her mouth with his hand and then strangled her. The very next day, he bought a saw and a 300-litre refrigerator. One day later, on May 20, he sawed her body into nearly 35 pieces and dumped them in the fridge. He told the police that he got the idea from Dexter, a television crime series about a vigilante serial killer.
According to PTI, Aaftab had worked as a chef a few years ago. He had undergone a two-week training on how to cut meat, which he used to chop Shraddha’s body. “He cut her body for two days,” an official told PTI. Aaftab kept the body parts in small black polythene bags, police told Indian Express. Over the next two to three months, he would step out of the house around 1 to 2 am and walk to dumping yards, cremation grounds, and jungle areas near Mehrauli to dispose of the body parts which he carried in a backpack, they said. Till then, he used incense sticks, potpourri, and room fresheners to mask the stench, according to Indian Express.
Aaftab meticulously planned which body parts to dispose of first depending on which part starts decomposing at the earliest, the police told PTI. He allegedly ground her intestines and disposed them first, leaving the head and other body parts in the fridge till August, a police officer told The Print. According to police officials, 13 body parts were found after the accused pinpointed the areas where he had thrown them, but only after forensic examination can it be confirmed if they belong to the victim. The police are yet to find the murder weapon.
The house that Aaftab and Shraddha had rented was on the first floor of a building on street number 1 in the Chhatarpur Pahadi area in South Delhi. Aaftab’s neighbours told PTI that they were clueless about the atrocity until his arrest. They said that the refrigerator he had bought to hide the body was kept in the drawing room. The neighbours also said they had never seen Shraddha around, but had spotted Aaftab coming downstairs to collect food delivery orders.
At the time of his arrest, Aaftab was working at a call centre in Gurugram, according to the police. A police officer told The Print that after killing Shraddha, Aaftab even met another woman on a dating app and brought her to the Chhatarpur flat.
While Shraddha was not in touch with her family members after moving in with Aaftab, she would often chat with her friends on Instagram. After her death, Shraddha’s social media account remained active. Aaftab would impersonate Shraddha on Instagram and chat with her friends until June 9, police told PTI. He even used her credit card to pay her dues, to avoid questions over her disappearance, according to The Print.
According to the FIR filed based on the missing complaint, Shraddha’s father had separated from her mother in 2016, and her mother died in 2020. The FIR mentioned that Shraddha used to tell her mother that Aaftab had been beating her up. Around 15 to 20 days after her mother’s death, she even called her father and told him about the abuse, it said. The FIR quoting her father read, “When I asked her to leave Aaftab and return home, he apologised to her and she went back with him. She did not listen to me and therefore I stopped talking to her for several months.”
With no activity on her social media accounts since June, one of Shraddha’s friends reached out to her father in September, HT reported. According to Ankit Chauhan, Additional DCP-I, South Delhi, Shraddha’s father called Aaftab, who told him that he had parted ways with her some time ago. “Unable to contact his daughter, the father then filed a missing complaint,” Chauhan said.
On September 17, Shraddha’s father reported her missing to the Manikpur police in Vasai, Mumbai. After receiving the complaint, Mumbai Police traced her last location to Delhi, and also called Aaftab, whose contradictory statements raised suspicion, prompting them to rope in Delhi Police. “Mumbai Police took out Call Detail Record (CDR) of Aaftab and Shraddha and found her mobile was switched off since May. Then we called up Aaftab and inquired with him and his statement was recorded… He earlier said they were residing in Chattarpur locality in Delhi but that she left his place in May after some fight between them. When we found some contradictions in his statement, we informed the Delhi Police and transferred all her details to them,” a senior Mumbai Police official said.
On November 7, the Mumbai Police sent the case file to the Delhi Police, who arrested Aaftab for the murder on Saturday, November 12. “He was firm during the interrogation. But when her father came, the accused burst into tears,” an official told PTI. According to the police, Aaftab is “sharp-minded” and was more comfortable answering them in English though he knew Hindi.
“Initially, Aaftab said that they had some arguments and she left him. Later during sustained interrogation, he disclosed that he and the deceased were in a live-in relationship since 2019. They had frequent fights… On May 18, the accused and the victim had an argument. She was shouting due to which he covered her mouth with his hand. Later, he strangled her, cut the body into parts and disposed of them in a nearby jungle area,” a senior Delhi Police official said.
Aaftab has been remanded to five days of police custody. On Tuesday, police took Aaftab to the jungle areas of Chhatarpur where he had allegedly dumped her body parts. A senior police official said that Aaftab will also be taken to some other places in the city as part of their probe into the murder.
With PTI inputs