Delhi Police has drafted a 3000-page chargesheet, against Aaftab Amin Poonawalla accused of murdering his live-in partner Shradda Walkar and chopping her body into 35 pieces with a saw-like object.
According to the sources, apart from 100 witnesses, forensic and electronic evidence has been made the basis of the draft charge sheet of more than 3000 pages. The Delhi police are likely to submit the chargesheet by January end. Legal experts are also looking into the charge sheet draft prepared by Delhi Police.
On May 18 last year, accused Aftab Poonawalla strangled Shraddha Walkar to death in Delhi’s Chhatarpur area, then cut the body into several pieces.
The police have also mentioned in the charge sheet that the bones recovered from the forests of Chhatarpur and their DNA report which confirmed that the bones belonged to Shraddha.
Apart from this, the confession of Aftab Poonawala and the report of the narco test are also included, although both these reports do not have much importance in the court, as per Delhi Police sources. On January 4, the police said samples of hair and bones recovered by them from a forest area in South Delhi’s Mehrauli matched with Shraddha’s.
Delhi Police has also recovered a saw, several knives and many other tools from the flat where Walkar was killed last year.
The murder came to the fore when a friend informed Shraddha Walkar’s father, Vikas Madan Walkar, that he had not heard from her for at least two months. Aaftab also used Shraddha’s social media accounts for months to give the impression that she was alive.
Notably, Shraddha met Aftab through a dating app. Within a few days, their conversation Shraddha from Palghar in Maharashtra decided to spend the rest of her life with Aftab, despite the family’s disapproval. She left her parents and started living with Aftab.
According to sources, Aftab used to chat with some other women on that dating app. After killing Shraddha, Aftab called a woman to his house. That woman also came to Aftab’s house. At that time, Aftab hid Shraddha’s body in the cupboard.
Earlier this year, Sony Entertainment Television (SET) ran into a controversy after it televised a Crime Patrol episode, resembling the Shraddha Walker murder case that shook the nation’s conscience. In the televised version, the name of victim and perpetrator were Anna Fernandes and Mihir Kanchwala respectively.
Netizens had registered protests and accused Sony of switching the religious identities of the victim and perpetrator in such a horrifying crime.
As soon as the episode aired on SET India’s YouTube page, viewers were quick to notice the uncanny resemblance between the episode on Sony TV’s Crime Patrol and the murder of Shraddha Walkar.
This resulted in a huge uproar on social media. The makers were chastised for distorting the facts while changing the religious identities of both the victim and accused. In no time, ‘boycott Sony TV’ began trending on Twitter.
Following the outrage, Sony LIV, on January 2, deleted the said episode of the true crime anthology series ‘Crime Patrol’ from the app. On the same day, Sony Liv also issued a statement on Twitter in defence of the episode after it was deleted.
