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A 28-year-old man allegedly murdered his girlfriend six months ago, chopped her body into at least 35 pieces for over two days, stored them in a refrigerator for about three months, and dumped the body parts piece by piece in different parts of south Delhi, police said on Monday, claiming to have solved a murder and cover-up that could be among the most gruesome in the Capital’s case files.

Even as police said that Aaftab Amin Poonawala has confessed to the murder, investigators are yet to establish if 13 pieces of decomposed bones that they have recovered in their search operations actually belong to Shraddha Vikas Walkar, 27. In the absence of any conclusive evidence to corroborate Poonawala’s alleged confession, the recovered bones have been sent for DNA profiling. Police are also yet to recover the weapon – some officers said it was a hacksaw, others said it was a meat cleaver – he allegedly used to hack the body.

In a murder investigation, it is crucial to find the body and the weapon to prove the case in a court of law as Poonawala’s confession before the police is not admissible as evidence in court.

On Monday afternoon, police teams fanned across different parts of the city – particularly the forested areas of Mehrauli and Chhattarpur – searching for the missing body parts. They said Poonawala, who works at a call centre in Gurugram, took investigating officers to three places near the Qutub Minar in Mehrauli, from where 13 pieces of decomposed bones were recovered.

Poonawala and Walkar, originally from Vasai near Mumbai, were in a relationship and had moved to Delhi in May 2022. They moved in together in a flat in south Delhi’s Chhattarpur Pahadi area, police said. Both sets of parents were opposed to the match because Poonawala is a Muslim and Walkar was a Hindu, according to police and relatives.

The couple’s family said they met sometime in 2019 while working at a call centre in Vasai. But Delhi Police said the two met on Bumble, a dating app, in early 2019.

The incident came to light on November 8, when the Mumbai Police approached the Delhi Police saying that Shraddha Walkar’s father, Vikas Madan Walkar, filed a missing complaint about his daughter.

“Shraddha’s father, Vikas, had told Mumbai Police about his daughter’s relationship with Aaftab Amin Poonawala. Both sets of parents were against this relationship. Shraddha was not in touch with her father. Sometime in September, one of her friends told Vikas that he was not able to get in touch with Shraddha for almost two months. Vikas then approached Mumbai Police last month. During their probe, the Mumbai Police traced the couple’s last location to the Mehrauli police station area. We summoned Poonawala for investigation. Initially, he said Shraddha had left him after a fight, but later confessed to the crime. He also led us to the places where he had disposed of the body parts,” said additional deputy commissioner of police (south), Ankit Chauhan.

Police said that after confessing to the murder, Poonawala revealed details of how he murdered Walkar, chopped the body, and disposed of the body parts one by one. He told police it took him almost two days to chop the body, an investigator said.

Narrating details of Poonawala’s alleged confession, Chauhan said that on the night of May 18, the couple had a bitter fight. “Poonawala strangled her to death inside the house. He then bought a hacksaw from a nearby shop for Rs.150, and a refrigerator. He chopped the body parts inside the bathroom, sterilised it so that there was no odour, and then kept the body parts in the refrigerator. The man would then take the body parts wrapped in polythene after midnight and dispose it in the jungle area and the drain in Mehrauli,” Chauhan said.

The officer said that, even after the murder, Poonawala used Walkar’s cell phone and updated her social media profile to ensure no one suspected anything amiss. He continued to live in the same flat where he had allegedly murdered Walkar, and started a job at a Gurugram call centre, where he was getting a monthly salary of Rs.52,000.

“It became a cause of concern for me when Shraddha did not respond to my messages or my calls when I tried reaching her in July and then in August this year,” said Lakshman Nadar (26), a close friend of Shraddha.

Nadar said he began asking their common friends about Shraddha and whether she had contacted any of them but when he found that none of them had heard from her, he reached out to her father.

“They fought a lot. Once in 2020, Walkar had sent me a message on WhatsApp, telling me that if I did not get her out of her house, Poonawala would kill her. We had warned Poonawala but stopped short of reporting him to the police, as Walkar told us not to.”

“We respected her wishes and left from her house,” Nadar said. “Last I spoke to her in May (this year). However, I thought I should find out about her as she stopped contact with me,” said Nadar.

According to Sampat Patil, senior police inspector of Manikpur police station, the 27-year-old victim’s father approached them on September 17 and submitted an application saying that his daughter was missing.

Evidence of chopped body parts

There are still several questions, however, that remain. Principal among them is that if Poonawala managed to chop the body on his own, and clean and sanitise the area, is there forensic evidence to corroborate the hacking, storing, and disposal of body parts? Another curious question is why did he continue to stay at the scene of the crime long after the murder and the cover-up?

The families of both the victim and the accused have come to Delhi.

Shraddha’s father, Vikas, said that he was opposed to the match because Poonawala is a Muslim. He mentioned this reason in the police FIR too.

“My daughter told her mother about her wish to stay in a live-in relationship with Aaftab Amin Poonawala. We opposed this because we are Hindus while the boy is a Muslim. We do not have inter-religion/intercaste marriage in our community,” he said in the FIR.

“Shraddha had walked out of the house and was in a live-in relationship with that man since 2019. She often complained to her mother about Poonawala beating her but that man persuaded her not to leave him. I stopped talking to her when she started living with him in Vasai in 2019. But my son’s friend was in touch with Shraddha. Sometime in September, he told me that he was unable to get in touch with her for the past 2-3 months. That is when I approached Mumbai police on September 15,” Vikas told HT.

At the Mehrauli police station in south Delhi, Shraddha’s father said he was checking with the police regularly for updates in the case. “I want that man to be hanged for killing my daughter. I want justice,” he said.

Poonawala’s father, Amin, said he too wants the strictest punishment for his son if he is guilty.

I was always opposed to the match police

We are Muslims and the woman is a Hindu. I knew people would give a communal angle if they got married. I urge everyone not to communalise the incident. If my son is guilty, he should be given the strictest punishment,” Amin said.

Delhi Police officers investigating the case said that Poonawala and Shraddha were living together in Maharashtra before leaving the state sometime in March-April 2022.

“There was trouble in their relationship, so the couple decided to take some time off from their routine lives and came here on a holiday. Before coming to Delhi in May first week, they visited different places in Kasol and Tosh in Himachal Pradesh, and Rishikesh in Uttarakhand. During that trip, they met a mutual friend, who suggested that they come to Delhi. That mutual friend had helped them get the flat in south Delhi,” said DCP Chauhan.

The officer added that the couple lived in their mutual friend Badri’s house for a week, and later shifted to the Chhattarpur flat on May 15. Shraddha stayed in that flat for just three days before being killed, police said.

With inputs from Megha Sood and Gautam Mengle

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