Aftab Amin Poonawalla, the accused in the horrific murder Shraddha Walker, told police that he had made up his mind to kill his girlfriend more than a week before he committed the crime. The 28-year-old man strangled his live-in partner on May 18 and chopped her body into over 35 pieces and dumped them in different parts of a forest area in South Delhi over the next several days.
"More than a week before the murder, I had made up my mind to kill Shraddha. Even on that day, Shraddha and I had a fight. I was determined to kill her when she suddenly became emotional and started crying. So I held back for later," Delhi Police sources quoted Aftab as saying in his confession, reported ANI.
Aftab reportedly told police that Shraddha doubted his commitment to their relationship whenever she saw him speaking to someone over phone. She used to pressurise Aftab for marrying her, resulting in frequent quarrel between the couple. On May 18, after an altercation between them escalated, Aftab smothered her.
"I was scared as I knew that if I dumped the body somewhere, I might be caught. I browsed Google all night to search for ways to dispose of the body and not arouse any suspicion. I also searched the internet on what kid of chopper would I have to use to piece the body," he told police, reported ANI.
The chilling details of the crime emerged on Monday after the accused was arrested and interrogated by the Delhi Police based on a missing complaint filed by Shraddha's father.
Aftab and Shraddha met on dating app Bumble and started dating each other. The couple moved to Delhi's Mehrauli earlier this year following their families' objection to their relationship.
Meanwhile, reports said the Delhi Police is likely to write to Bumble seeking details of Aftab's profile after it emerged that he had brought home another woman, who also he had met on the site, just days after Shraddha's murder. The investigators are trying to ascertain if any of the women he dated was the reason for the killing.
Meanwhile, a doctor who treated Poonawalla, said the accused had visited him in May, the same month when the woman was killed, for treating a wound.
Dr Anil Kumar recalled Poonawalla was very aggressive and restless when he had come to him for treatment and when he asked him about his injury, he claimed he got hurt while cutting fruit.
Earlier in the day, Aftab was taken to the forest area in south Delhi's Chhatarpur where the investigation team spent nearly three hours to locate specific places where he had allegedly dumped her body parts.
The police have also recovered 13 body parts, believed to be of the woman, from different areas which will be sent for DNA analysis.