Aaftab Poonawala withdraws his bail plea applied ‘erroneously’ at Delhi Saket Court

Photo: IANS


The accused in the Shraddha Walkar murder case, Aaftab Amin Poonawala withdrew his bail plea on Thursday applied erroneously at the Delhi Saket court.

On December 17, he had said that he signed the ‘vakalatnama’ but did not know about filing a bail application.

Additional Sessions Judge Vrinda Kumari had said the court received an intimation from Poonawala through email that the bail application was moved by mistake.

However, when the court asked him whether the bail plea should be pending, Poonawala had said: “I would like that the counsel talks to me and then withdraw the bail plea.”

He had moved an application to the court seeking bail on December 16.

On December 9, the court had extended Poonawalla’s judicial custody for 14 days. He was arrested on November 12 and is currently lodged in the Tihar Jail.

The brutality of the murder was officially confirmed after the DNA extracted from bone pieces recovered in the Mehrauli forest matched with her father’s samples, sources said on Thursday.

The Special Commissioner of Police (Law & Order), Sagar Preet Hooda, had said that police have received the DNA test report from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) and the polygraph test from the FSL, Rohini.

However, he refrained from officially announcing the death of Walkar as the third, narco-test report was still awaited.

The post-narco test of Poonawalla was also concluded on December 2. His test was conducted inside the Tihar Jail by the FSL officials.

Poonawala’s polygraph test report was submitted to the police by the Forensic Sciences Lab (FSL) on Wednesday.

The Delhi Police teams investigating the case had recovered 13 bone pieces after the accused told the investigators that he chopped her body into 35 pieces and dumped them into the forest area.

Blood samples were also recovered from the bathroom and kitchen in the Chattarpur house, where both Poonawalla and Walkar had shifted on May 15, three days before her murder.

The bone samples were sent for DNA analysis to the CFSL.

Walkar and Poonawala had met through the dating app ‘Bumble’ in 2018. They had come to Delhi on May 8.

On May 18, Aaftab killed Shraddha, chopped her body into 35 pieces, and dumped them across various places over a period of 18 days.