‘Aaftab will hunt me down, try to kill me’: Shraddha Walkar in audio clip

Special public prosecutor Amit Prasad, who appeared on behalf of the state, played an audio clip of Shraddha Walkar, the 27-year-old woman who was allegedly killed by her live-in-partner Aaftab Amin Poonawala, before a Delhi court on Monday as he argued that the couple’s live-in relationship “had a violent past”.

The prosecution, during the arguments on the charges, played the audio clip from the Practo App through which the couple had booked a session with a psychologist. In the clip, Walkar could be purportedly heard saying, “…whenever I start ranting about my anger, if he is somewhere around, anywhere in Vasai (near Mumbai), anywhere around me in this…city, he will find me, he will hunt me down, he will try to kill me, that’s… the problem.

“I don’t know (how) many times he tried to kill me — this is not the first time he tried to kill me… The way he grabbed my neck, I blacked out. I was unable to breathe for 30 seconds… Thankfully I was able to defend myself by pulling his hair,” news agency PTI quoted Walkar as saying in the clip played in the court.

According to the charge sheet, Poonawala allegedly strangled his live-in partner Walkar on May 18 and sawed her body into several pieces, which he kept in a fridge for almost three weeks at his residence in south Delhi’s Mehrauli. He then allegedly scattered the remains across Delhi, some of which have since been recovered.

On Monday, her father Vikas Walkar said in the interest of justice, the murder case should be heard in a time-bound manner in a fast-track court.

“We request for the proceedings to be conducted in a time-bound manner in a fast-track court,” Vikas said.

His counsel, advocate Seema Kushwaha, said she would shortly move a petition in Delhi High Court for time-bound proceedings in a fast-track court.

Vikas, the complainant in the case, said he was unable to perform his daughter’s last rites because the recovered body parts were kept as evidence.

“In a few months, it will be an entire year of my daughter’s death. When will I get the remains to complete her last rites?” Vikas asked while speaking to reporters outside the court.

Referring to Monday’s proceedings during which an audio clip of Walkar was played in court, Kushwaha said Vikas started trembling because of the emotional turmoil stemming from hearing his daughter’s voice.

Kushwaha said Vikas felt that his daughter was still alive on hearing his daughter’s voice in the recording. She said before DNA profile matching confirmed that the recovered remains belonged to his daughter, Vikas had hoped against all odds that she was alive.

During its arguments in court, Delhi Police said there are “incriminating circumstances revealed through reliable and clinching evidence which form a chain of events”.

Poonawala has been booked under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) of the Indian Penal Code.

The Indian Express reported that the special public prosecutor also relied on Shraddha’s letter to the local police in Maharashtra on November 23, 2020, stating that Poonawala “tried to kill me by suffocating me and he scares and blackmails me that he will kill me, cut me up in pieces and throw me away”.