Shraddha Walkar was hospitalised in 2020 with severe back pain, assault suspected
With each passing day, details of the toxic relationship between Shraddha Walkar and Aaftab Ameen Poonawala and the gruesome murder keep emerging — shocking the nation repeatedly. Shraddha, who was strangled and chopped into 35 pieces by her live-in partner Aaftab, was hospitalised in 2020 at a hospital in Vasai, Maharashtra, with severe back pain, India Today has learned.
Shraddha was hospitalised at Ozone Multispeciality Hospital in Vasai, with severe pain in her back and spine for around a week, on December 3, 2020. It is suspected that she had been assaulted by Aaftab, which led to the back pain following which she had to be hospitalised.
Shraddha had once told her friend Laxman Nadar that there would be many fights and arguments between her and Aaftab. "Once she contacted me on WhatsApp and asked me to rescue her from her residence. She said that if she stayed with him (Aaftab) that night, he would kill her," Nadar said.
When Shraddha gave details about her abusive relationship to her family, her father had asked her to stay back but when Aaftab came to pick her up, she left with him.
'AAFTAB A DRUG ADDICT'
After a heated argument on May 18, Aaftab Poonawala allegedly strangled his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar on the bed that they shared in their rented Delhi apartment in Chhatarpur. According to sources in Delhi Police, Aaftab was a drug addict and on that fateful day, he was under the influence of drugs when he killed Shraddha.
The accused reportedly told the police that on May 18, an argument broke out between the couple over shifting household items from Mumbai to Delhi and also over expenses during the day, which went on for quite some time.
He then went out to smoke a cigarette stuffed with drugs and got angry as Shraddha was shouting at him. A furious Aaftab then choked Shraddha's neck at around 9 pm and smoked cigarettes throughout the night even as Shraddha's body was lying in front of him, police sources said.
Aaftab then chopped her body into some 35 pieces in 10 hours, stuffed them into a refrigerator and then scattered them at various locations across the national capital to avoid detection. The forensic team of Delhi Police on Thursday discovered traces of blood in Aaftab's kitchen. They suspect that the blood stains were from when Aaftab murdered Shraddha and chopped her body into pieces.
Meanwhile, a Delhi court on Thursday extended the police custody of accused Aaftab Ameen Poonawala for the next five days in the Shraddha Walker murder case. The court also allowed the application for a narco test of the accused.
