The Delhi police on Sunday recovered parts of a skull, a decapitated jaw and other bones in connection with the murder of 26-year-old Shraddha Walkar.
Aftab Poonawala, 28, was arrested for allegedly strangulating his live-in partner Shraddha and dismembering her body into multiple pieces using a saw or a cleaver knife. He kept the body parts in a 300-litre fridge for almost three months at his residence in south Delhi’s Chhatarpur before dumping them across the forested area of Mehrauli.
“In today’s search, we recovered parts of a skull and a decapitated jaw. We will send this to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) for matching it with Shraddha father’s DNA,” the source said.
A pond in Maidan Garhi was also cordoned off where Aftab Poonawala is suspected to have dumped his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar’s body parts, in Delhi on Sunday. | Photo Credit: -
Sources said multiple police teams have been deployed to recover the remains of Shraddha.
A pond in Maidan Garhi was also cordoned off and searched by police teams and municipality workers after Aftab purportedly told the police that he had dumped parts of Shraddha’s body in the pond too. The accused was also taken to his flat in Chhatarpur to recreate the sequence of the crime and to recover further evidence, the police said.
The narco-analysis test of Aftab is likely to be carried out on Monday at the Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital in Rohini, sources told The Hindu.
Sources at FSL, Rohini, said the police had a discussion with their team regarding the samples recovered and the narco test. “However, we haven’t received any sample from the police so far which we can match with Shraddha’s father and brother’s blood sample,” the source said.
‘Fit for narco test’
According to the norm, Aftab has to be certified by the hospital’s medical officer to be mentally and physically fit to undergo a narco test. A police officer said that the said medical tests have been carried out on Aftab and he has been adjudged as fit to undergo the test which will be likely done on Monday.
A local court on Thursday had sent Aftab to five-days police custody after the police submitted that he is “misleading” them regarding the sequence of events leading up to the murder and that they have to take him to cities in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand to get him identified by the staffers of the hotels where he and Shraddha stayed before coming to Delhi. A senior officer said that the police is likely to seek extension of Aftab’s custody in order to gather more leads.
The police had on Saturday recovered a CCTV footage purportedly showing Aftab outside his house while carrying a backpack, allegedly with Shraddha’s body parts. They had also recovered a sharp object from the duo’s flat on Saturday which may or may not be the weapon of crime, the police had said.
