‘Aftab has not shown any regret since his arrest’

“Aftab Poonawala did not show any regret. He says he can’t speak Hindi and is comfortable only in English,” the officer said.

Aftab Poonawala, accused of murdering his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar, being brought to the Mehrauli forest area by the police. | Photo Credit: PTI

Aftab Poonawala has not shown any remorse since his arrest, said a senior police officer.

“Even during his interrogation, he did not show any regret. He says he can’t speak Hindi and is comfortable only in English,” the officer added. A doctor who treated Aftab between 2019 and 2020, told the police that Aftab preferred speaking in English. Dr. Anil Kumar, who runs a clinic in Mehrauli, also said that Aftab came across as “very aggressive”. Former colleagues and neighbours of Aftab in Mumbai, where he used to work with Shraddha before the two moved to the Capital, remember him as someone who stayed aloof and did not have many friends.

“I used to go to his house very often and meet his parents. They were a very simple middle-class family living in a one-room kitchen flat. His father had a job, his mother was a housewife and his brother started working later,” said Abdullah Khan, Aftab’s neighbour in Mumbai. He remembers Aftab not having any friends in the locality.

One of Aftab’s colleagues, requesting anonymity, said that she, Shraddha and Aftab worked at the same sales company in Mumbai in 2019. She added that Shraddha helped Aftab get a job in their office after the two met on a dating app. “He was a different person then. He was jolly and used to crack jokes,” she also said.