Shraddha Walkar Murder Case: Delhi’s Saket court extends police custody of Aftab Poonawalla for next 4 days

NEW DELHI: Delhi’s Saket court on Tuesday extended the police custody of Aftab Amin Poonawalla for the next 4 days in the sensational Shraddha Walkar murder case. Aftab was earlier produced before the Delhi court in a special hearing. Delhi Police had requested the court to extend his custody since Aftab had been misleading the investigators and giving false statements in connection with the bone-chilling murder case.

The investigators are yet to find the murder weapon and the chopped and charred head of Shraddha Walkar, the 27-year-old live-in partner of Aftab. Walkar was murdered by her live-in partner Aftab Ameen Poonawalla in the Mehrauli area on May 18. The accused then chopped her body into 35 pieces and disposed them of in several parts of the city.

Delhi | Saket court extends police custody of Aftab Poonawala for the next 4 days in Shraddha Walkar murder case. He was produced before the court in a special hearing.

(File photo) pic.twitter.com/zxJNST6MNj — ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2022

Meanwhile, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking transfer of the Shraddha Walkar murder case probe from Delhi Police to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

In the plea, petitioner Advocate Joshini Tuli argued for the transfer of the case "due to the sensitive nature of the case and the hampering of Investigation and tampering of witnesses and evidence of the present case by the Delhi Police/ Respondent No.1 and Respondent No.4".

It also alleged that investigation of Mehrauli Police "cannot efficiently be carried out due to administrative/staff paucity as well as lack of sufficient technical and scientific equipment to find out the evidence and the witnesses as the incident had taken place about 6 months back in May 2022."

About the media interferences, the plea pointed out that "It is pertinent to mention here that the Court of the Ld. MM on 17.11.2022 when the accused was produced was chock a block with mediapersons leaving no space for even the lawyers to step foot in the concerned courtroom."

The plea contended that the place of the alleged crime has not been sealed by the Delhi Police to date which is continuously being accessed by the people and media personnel and has been contaminated.

The case is an interstate offence beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the Delhi Police because they have disclosed to the media they are going to take Aaftab to five different states, including Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra, for further investigation, it stated.