Shubham Lonkar, the mastermind and wanted accused in Nationalist Congress Party leader Baba Siddique's murder had allegedly planned the murder of Aftab Poonawala, the accused arrested in the gruesome Shraddha Walker murder case, sources said.
The Saket court on Tuesday extended the police custody of Aftab Poonawala to four more days after he was produced before the court via video conferencing in a special hearing.
The society member recalled that Aaftab spoke normally during his visit.
Twenty-year-old Arjun Tanwar, arrested for killing his parents and sister at their south Delhi residence, had searched online about methods of murder before committing the crime, police sources said on Thursday.
Poonawala, however, denied the charges and demanded a trial. The matter has been posted for further proceedings on June 1.
Giving a chilling account of the gory crime, the police alleged that Poonawala's partner Walkar was "already living in constant fear of getting killed" even before the accused decided to get rid of her in a barbaric and brutal manner.
According to police officials, 28-year-old Aftab Poonawala of Mumbai has been arrested in the case, and some severed body parts of the woman, Shraddha Walkar, have been recovered.
Noting that India has a long tradition of arranged marriages, Singh said a large section of society even to this day gives priority to marriages arranged by parents or relatives.
Senior police officers reached the spot and barricaded the road leading to the building where the body was found in a single bedroom house, where the victim was staying alone.
In a new development in Shraddha Walkar murder case, Aaftab Amin Poonawala's most recent girlfriend was in shock after hearing about the horrific act by him and said that she had no clue that human body parts were kept inside Aaftab's Chhatarpur residence when she visited there twice after the murder.
The pieces of Walkar's body were kept inside the refrigerator when he called the psychologist at his place, according to police sources.
The process of recording the statements was underway at the Vasai crime branch office, he said.
A social activist, with whom call centre employee Shraddha Walkar had participated in a Mumbai beach clean-up drive, has claimed the deceased suspected her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala of cheating on her and appeared quiet and aloof during the cleanliness campaigns.
The Delhi police wants to ascertain if any of the women Aftab dated on the app could be a possible motive behind Shraddha's murder.
A senior police official said the accused Aaftab Amin Poonawala will be taken to some other places in the city besides the Chhattarpur jungle area as part of their probe into the murder.
The doctor who treated the Mumbai girl, Shraddha Walkar, for acute shoulder and back pain in the year 2020, on Friday said that the accused Aaftab Poonawala accompanied her when she was brought to hospital.
According to the sources, police recovered fragments of skull and other body parts, mostly bones, on the third day of extensive searches in the forest areas of Mehrauli and Gurgaon in the Delhi-NCR region.
It was in November 2020 that Shraddha Walkar first confided about the physical assault from Aaftab Amin Poonawala, recalls a former colleague, adding that she was about to approach the police but stopped short of pressing charges after Aaftab's parents intervened.
The narco analysis test on Aaftab Amin Poonawala, who has been accused of killing live-in-partner, will not be conducted on Monday even as the process required to do it has been initiated, officials said.
In the latest development in the horrific Shraddha Walkar murder case, Delhi Police have found CCTV footage showing the accused Aaftab Amin Poonawala carrying a bag on a street outside his house in Delhi during the wee hours.
"One common friend of Aaftab Poonawala and Shraddha Walkar has been called for questioning. This is the friend who had intimated Shraddha's father about her going incommunicado," the sources said.
A yellow-sari daintily clad Indrani was beaming broadly and it seemed like for the first time, for her, Rahul had done something right. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora Murder Trial.
