Aftab Poonawala charged with murder, disappearance of evidence in Shraddha Walkar case

Aftab Poonawala was charged with murder in the death of Shraddha Walkar by a Delhi court on Tuesday. He has also been charged with forcing evidence to vanish.

Additional Meetings The offender was charged with offences under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), according to Judge Manisha Khurana Kakkar. Aftab Poonawala has pled not guilty and requested a trial.

Poonwala allegedly strangulated his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar and sawed her body into 35 pieces and kept them in a 300-litre refrigerator before dumping them across various locations in the city over several days.

In January, the Delhi Police had filed a 6,629-page chargesheet in the case. The chargesheet was filed 75 days after the police had started investigations in November last year.

Poonwala and Walkar, hailing from Mumbai, were in a relationship and had moved to Delhi in May 2022. The murder came to light when a friend informed Walkar’s father that he had not heard from her from nearly two months. After being unable to contact his daughter, Walkar’s father informed Mumbai Police last October. The Mumbai police’s probe led police to the couple’s rented room in south Delhi Chhattarpur Pahadi.

The breakthrough came when 13 decomposed body parts, mostly pieces of bones, retrieved on Poonawala’s insistence led to a DNA match that confirmed Shraddha Walkar was murdered. Aftab Poonawala was arrested in November last year and is currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail.