One usual evening, as the doorbell rings at house number 93/1 in Lane No. 1 at Chhattarpur Pahadi in south Delhi, Aaftab Amin Poonawala opens the door and lets a woman in. The duo, who had met a few days ago at a dating app, then enter Aaftab’s room and the door closes. Right outside the door, in a poorly lit corner of the house, is kept a newly bought refrigerator. The woman, whom Aaftab has just let in is unaware that the man she is here to make love with, had, a few weeks ago, chopped off his live-in partner Shraddha Vikas Walkar’s body into pieces that are still lying in that refrigerator — frozen, wrapped in multiple plastic bags.
This woman, however, was not the only one to have visited the house unaware of Walkar’s dismembered body lying in the fridge. Poonawala continued to meet several women on the dating app after killing Walkar, some of his friends, food delivery persons, and many others frequented the house.
Even as they could notice multiple incense sticks lit in the house, strong smell of room fresheners and a sharp stench of bleach, it did not occur to them that these could possibly be a cover up, say Delhi police officers who are investigating Walkar’s murder.
According to the police, Walkar was killed by Poonawala this May, roughly a month after they eloped to Delhi from Maharashtra against her family’s wish to stay in a live-in relationship with him. In his confession to the police, the man said he killed her as they often fought and she had been pestering him to marry her.
A senior police officer told CNN-News18 that Poonawala continued using the dating app, which had also become a sour point between him and his live-in partner leading to frequent fights and eventually to her murder.
“Poonawala continued meeting other women through this application, which Walkar did not appreciate. They often had fights on this. Poonawala has told us that she had become possessive about him. However, he has also alleged that Walkar too used the same app to meet other men. He further confessed that he met many women and slept with them in the same house as Walkar’s severed body remained in the refrigerator,” the officer said, requesting not to be named.
The police also found out that the refrigerator was bought recently by Poonawala for the sole purpose to stash the decomposing body parts of the woman. “After strangulating her, the man wanted to dispose of the body in order to escape. Since the body has started decomposing he bought the refrigerator. He even ordered bleach online to wash the body parts as it had started emanating a foul smell. We will check his phone and computer to find what all did he order during that period and then establish a sequence of events. He has also told us that the saw he used to cut Walkar’s body into more than 30 pieces, was bought from a local shop in Chhattarpur area,” the officer added.
Detailing the investigation conducted so far, the officer said since Saturday, multiple police teams, forensic experts and crime teams have been scanning the wooded area where Poonawala has claimed that he had disposed of Walkar’s body parts.
“We have recovered some parts at his instance. They are in a very bad shape. Mostly bones have been recovered which prima facie appear to be of a human’s. They have been sent for examination. A sample of Walkar’s father has also been taken so that the DNA profiling of the recovered bones can be done,” the officer said.
The Delhi Police arrested Poonawala on Saturday after a kidnapping case was registered on a complaint given by her father, who could not contact his daughter for months and suspected that something was not right.
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