After chopping off his partner's body parts and stuffing them in a fridge, Aaftab Poonawalla reportedly brought another woman to their shared one-bedroom flat in South Delhi's Mehrauli on a date, Indian Express reported quoting police sources.
The sources revealed details of 28-year-old Poonawalla's interrogation in connection with his 27-year-old partner Shraddha Walkar's murder.
Poonawalla allegedly met the other woman on Bumble, the same dating app where he first got acquainted with Walkar in 2019, according to the sources.
The IE report added, 'The other woman came to his house a couple of times in June-July. He hid Walkar's body parts in the fridge and kitchen.'
According to police investigations, Poonawalla murdered Walkar on May 18 after the two got into a fight at their Mehrauli home. The cops suspect that Walkar was screaming during their fight which led to Poonawalla attempting to silence her leading to her strangulation.
The accused, who had studied hotel management and worked as a chef a few years ago was trained in cutting meat.
On May 20, he chopped her body into 35 pieces and stuffed them into a 300-litre fridge he purchased after the murder.
Police said Poonawalla would pack the refrigerator's deep freezer with the pieces and put the remaining ones in the bottom tray. After some time, he would take the frozen pieces out, to deep freeze those kept in the tray.
He also used incense sticks and room freshener to suppress the foul smell.
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He used to take out the chopped pieces, pack them in polythene bags and take them to the forest in a backpack. "He would go to the jungle at around 2 am and return a couple of hours later. He repeated this for around 20 days," the official said.
To maintain a sense of normalcy after her murder, Poonawalla went ahead and logged onto Walkar's Instagram account and kept in touch with her friends, giving them an impression that she was still alive.
But her friends grew suspicious, reported PTI, when the account remained inactive for long and contacted her family in Mumbai who then informed the police.
After receiving the complaint, Mumbai Police traced her last location to Delhi and also called Poonawalla whose contradictory statements raised suspicion, prompting them to rope in Delhi Police.
On November 7, the Mumbai Police sent the case file to the Delhi Police.
Originally from Mumbai, Walkar and Poonawalla too had met and worked in the city. Fights plagued the relationship and their families objected too as they belonged to different faiths, prompting the couple to move out of the financial capital.
They went to Himachal Pradesh on a trip to resolve their issues and later arrived in Delhi. They shifted to their Mehrauli house on May 15th.
with PTI inputs