On Tuesday, the Delhi Police filed charge sheet in the Mehrauli murder case to reveal that the accused murderer Aftab Poonawala had several girlfriends from Delhi to Dubai and that this was the main reason of frequent quarrel between him and Shraddha.
Poonawala, 28, is charged with strangling Walkar on May 18 of last year, dismembering her body, hiding the fragments for over three weeks at his home in South Delhi’s Chhattarpur neighbourhood, and then dispersing the pieces around the city.
Police said in the 6,629-page charge sheet that Walkar had previously been lived in constant fear of getting killed or being physically beaten on minor problems before her live-in partner brutally murdered her. The document stated that Poonawala used to beat her viciously and at times used to strangle her close to death. Shraddha lacked support from her family as she was living with Aftab against the wishes of her father and brother.
According to the reports, Aaftab Poonawala had a number of girlfriends, one of whom was in Dubai, and his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar questioned his loyalty, which caused them to quarrel frequently. The murderer also confessed that he was friends with two women, one who lived in Nagpur and the other in Gurugram. “Walkar doubted that he was cheating on her and he also disclosed that it was the main issue of his quarrel with Walkar. He disclosed that he used to beat her over these issues,” the charge sheet said.
Soon after Walkar’s murder, Poonawala communicated with many women using the dating app Bumble. It is through the same dating app, that he also met Walkar in 2018–19, and they later started a live-in relationship.
Police interviewed a witness who said that Sharddha Walkar frequently took sick days from work under the excuse of illness because Poonawala assaulted her. Walkar used to work at a call centre in Mumbai and informed her team supervisor that Poonawala had assaulted her and that she was unable to go to work.
Reports further mention that Aftab used to invite one of his girlfriends to his apartment. When his new friend would come to visit him at his house, he would remove Walkar’s body parts from the fridge and store them in the kitchen. He used to immediately put the parts back in the refrigerator after his new friend’s departure. “He came in contact with one such girl who is a psychologist and called (her)… to his flat. However, when she used to visit his flat, Aaftab used to clean the fridge and used to put the body parts of Shraddha on the upper shelf and at times on the lower shelf of the kitchen,” the charge sheet said.
The charge sheet stated that Poonawala had even gifted a silver ring to his new friend. The silver ring originally belonged to Walkar. However, the woman who was gifted the silver ring after Shraddha’s murder joined the investigation in November of last year and gave the authorities the ring. “On November 11, 2022 (she)…joined the investigation and handed over the silver ring and stated that this was the same ring that Poonawala gifted to her. Later on, the said ring was identified by (two of her friends) during test identification proceedings (TIP) as the Walkar’s ring,” the charge sheet said.
Police were informed by one of Walkar’s acquaintances that she warned him in July 2021 that Poonawala would murder her if she continued to stay with him. According to the charge sheet, Poonawala was vague in his responses during the initial investigation and told police that Walkar had split up with him and departed on May 5 of last year. He said that he had lost contact with her after that.
Poonawala revealed that following the murder of Walkar, he visited a local hardware store and bought a saw, three blades, a hammer, and a plastic clip. “Thereafter, I came back to the flat and shifted the body of Shraddha in the bathroom and cut her hands from the wrist and kept them in a white polythene,” the chargesheet quoted Poonawala’s disclosure statement. According to the police, the deceased corpse was divided into 17 parts over the course of the following four to five days, including three pieces from each hand (six pieces), three pieces from each leg (six pieces), the head, chest, two pieces from the pelvis, and the thumb.
The charge sheet also states that Poonawala had first established physical relations with Shraddha in May, 2019. “Walkar’s family, however, raised objections to their relationship after finding a pregnancy test kit, following which Poonawala took Walkar to a rented accommodation in Mumbai in October 2019,” the report read.
Earlier it was reported that the accused had burnt the pieces of the corpse with petrol and crushed many of Shraddha’s bones in a grinder and threw its powder on the road.