Amid the ongoing investigation of the gruesome murder of Shraddha Vikas Walker in India’s capital Delhi, the police found a trail of Instagram chats and bank payments planted by the accused, Aaftab Amin Poonawala which helped them crack the case. The 26-year-old Walker was allegedly strangled to death by Poonawala, who then chopped her body into 35 pieces and disposed them off at night over a period of time.
A further probe into the case shows that a digital trail was reportedly created by the accused to make it seem as though the victim skipped town on her own, which was in line with his previous account to the police. According to the reports, he had initially told them that Shraddha had left the house they shared in Delhi after their fight on May 22 with only her mobile phone.
But following the interrogation, Aaftab later admitted that on May 18, after an argument, he strangled Shraddha and dismembered her body into 35 pieces to dispose it off easily without arousing suspicion. He also confessed that after “chopping the body”, he “washed the blood and stuffed the pieces in plastic bags and then kept them in the fridge”.
Notably, it was the slew of aforementioned digital footprints that Poonawala had created that led the police to a major breakthrough in the case, reports ANI. Based on the previous account, the police tracked Walker’s phone including call details and signal location. They found that between May 22 and 26 at least Rs. 54,000 ($ 664) had been transferred from Walker's account to Poonawala's which he reportedly did by using the banking app on her phone, contradicting his statement that he had not been in touch with her since May 22.
When questioned by the police again, the accused reportedly admitted that he had made the transfers since he had access to her passwords and also had been paying her credit card bills to bank so they would not go to her Mumbai address. Reports citing police sources said that the bank transfer location was in the Mehrauli forest area of Delhi.
Additionally, the police also found a chat from Shraddha's Instagram account on May 31 and the location of which was also traced to Mehrauli. Therefore, the officers in Vasai, near Maharashtra’s Palghar district where Walker hails from, contacted the Delhi police who detained him again for questioning. He was asked if she had in fact left her phone at their apartment in Delhi after which Aaftab revealed the truth that he had killed her on May 18.
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In 2019, Poonawala and Walker met in Mumbai and started dating. However, her family did not approve of their interfaith relationship after which they were in a live-in relationship for three years and moved to Delhi in the first week of May. The victim’s father had come to Delhi after Shraddha’s friend had said that her phone had been switched off for weeks back in September.
Recent developments in the case
So far, the accused has led the police to at least 10 of the nearly 35 pieces of the victim’s body that he had thrown in the forest. Furthermore, a report by Times Now citing the Delhi police claims that the money Aaftab reportedly transferred from Shraddha's account to his own was used to buy a fridge in which he kept the chopped body parts.
Recent reports say that Poonawala’s family is now at an unknown location and is untraceable after they left their house in Mumbai a week ago and Aaftab was there to help during the move. “Aaftab Poonawala was called twice for questioning, once last month and the second time on November 3,” said the Maharashtra police. However, at the time he had said that she left and “they do not live together” anymore. Subsequently, whenever he was called for questioning he never “showed restlessness or nervousness on his face”, said the police.
The police also told ANI that they will request a mental and psychological assessment which will help them verify if he is saying the truth and “understand his mental state” given the multiple discrepancies in his statement. Meanwhile, the Delhi police had also applied for a narco test of the accused the permission for which is yet to be granted by the court.
(With inputs from agencies)
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