NEW DELHI: Aaftab Amin Poonawala, the accused in the murder of his live-in partner, Shraddha Walkar used her phone number to buy the new refrigerator which he used to preserve her body parts, official sources said on Monday.
Shraddha was allegedly strangled by the accused on May 18, who chopped her body parts in several pieces and then disposed of the parts at different locations of a forest area in south Delhi and Gurugram in Haryana for several months.
On May 19, he bought a new refrigerator from an electronic shop located at Chattarpur area of south Delhi. After seeing the receipt, it was revealed that he used Shraddha’s mobile number to buy the fridge. Delhi Police is piecing all the crucial evidence together which will solidify the murder case against Aaftab. It took the accused several months to gradually dispose of all the body parts. Aaftab took several measures to hide the evidences and using Shraddha’s phone number for the receipt was one of the ways, said sources.
He used to leave his flat late night, carrying a plastic bag containing a body part and throw the bag at different locations. The search operation continues to find more evidence. In the past few days, the cops have found two important evidence a fragment of a skull and a portion of a jaw. However, whether they belong to Shraddha can only be ascertained after DNA sampling.
On Sunday, police deployed teams to pump out water from a pond in Maidangarhi looking for the body parts of the victim. But the exercise had to be stopped on Monday. Sources said problems were faced in emptying the pond because of sewer water from surrounding areas flowing into it. Over one lakh litres of water was pumped out on Sunday but the level of the pond returned to the previous level due to sewer water flowing into it.
It was also being considered to deploy swimmers to search for the victim’s body, although it was a risky affair since the pond was also filled with a lot of muck, the sources added. The Delhi police on Monday moved an application in court here for conducting the polygraph test on Aaftab.
Aaftab bought hammer, saw from Mehrauli shop
Delhi Police has recovered a human jaw during searches for the remains of Shraddha and approached a dentist in a bid to ascertain whether it is of the victim. Meanwhile, owner of a hardware shop located near Aaftab rented accommodation in South Delhi’s Mehrauli, said that the accused had purchased a hammer and a saw from him.