‘Aaftab was dating other women’

New Delhi: Aaftab Amin Poonawala was dating several women through an app and even brought one to his residence while the body parts of his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar were still lying there and used to remove them from the fridge during her visits, the Delhi police have claimed in its chargesheet.

Giving a chilling account of the gory crime, the police alleged that Walkar was “already living in constant fear of getting killed” even before the accused decided to get rid of her in a barbaric and brutal manner.

Poonawala had earlier tried to mislead police by giving a false statement that after murdering Walkar, he had burnt her body pieces and after grinding the bones with a stone grinder, blown or thrown away the powder, the chargesheet said.

According to excerpts from the 6,629-page-long chargesheet, soon after the murder of Walkar, the accused again came in contact with several girls through Bumble’, a dating app through which he came to know Walkar.

“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 chargesheet said.

Poonawala, 28, allegedly strangled his live-in partner Walkar on May 18 last year and sawed her body into several pieces which he kept in a fridge for almost three weeks at his residence in South Delhi’s Chattarpur locality. He later disposed of the body parts across the city over several days.

The accused claimed that he became friends with Walkar in 2018-19 through the Bumble’ app itself and later the couple “fell in love”, it said.

According to Poonawala’s disclosure statement, he made physical relations with Walkar for the first time on May 17, 2019. Walkar’s family, however, found a pregnancy test kit and raised objections to their relationship, following which Ponnawala took Walkar to a rented accommodation in Mumbai in October 2019, the charge sheet said.

The couple’s relationship soured when Walkar found out that Poonawala was talking to other women on the App, the chargesheet said.