Aftab Poonawala, accused of killing his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar and chopping her body into pieces, withdrew his bail application on Thursday. He told the court that the bail application was filed by his lawyer due to some miscommunication.
Mr. Poonawala’s lawyer, advocate M.S. Khan, had filed a bail plea in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Vrinda Kumari on December 14. During the hearing on December 17, the accused told the court that he was not aware of such an application being filed on his behalf. The court had then deferred the hearing till December 22.
“I met Aftab for 50 minutes on Monday and with mutual consent, we decided to withdraw the bail application,” Mr. Khan told The Hindu. He added that he would make a pitch for bail after the police file a chargesheet in the case.
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‘Fictitious story’
In the bail plea, the lawyer had said that the case filed against Mr. Poonawala by the Delhi Police was based on a fictitious story which totally contradicted the true facts of the matter. The bail plea had claimed that the accused had maintained a clean track record throughout his life and had never been involved in any criminal activity in the past.
Mr. Poonawala, currently in judicial custody at Tihar Jail, is accused of strangulating Shraddha Walkar on May 18. He allegedly chopped her body into 35 pieces and stored them in a fridge for three months before finally managing to dump them at different locations across the city to hide the evidence. He was arrested by the Delhi Police on November 11.
The police has recently recovered 13 body parts which were identified as belonging to Ms. Walkar. Sources say that the parts were located from spots which were intimated by the accused himself, in the Chhattarpur forest area as well as in the Maidangarhi pond near Gurugram’s DLF Phase 3.
Earlier this month, the court had extended Mr. Poonawala’s judicial custody till December 23.
