Explained: How Delhi’s ‘Dexter’ killed his girlfriend and hid the murder for six months

It is a murder most foul. In a case of love gone wrong, a 26-year-old woman was killed by her live-in partner. He strangled her to death, then chopped her body into 35 pieces, and scattered them in Delhi’s Mehrauli forest area over 18 days.

As details after more gruesome details of the killing emerge, we take a look at what went wrong and how the man tried to cover it up for more than six months.

Also read: From Delhi's Dexter-inspired killing to Tandoor murder: When love stories turned fatal

The couple eloped

Shraddha Walkar met Aftab Amin Poonawala, 28, at a call centre in Mumbai and they started dating soon after. Walkar’s family did not approve of the inter-faith relationship. Hence the couple eloped to Delhi and started living in. Here too, they took up jobs at a multinational call centre and lived in a rented apartment in Delhi’s Chhatarpur area.

Soon Walkar began to pressure Poonawala for marriage and that’s when the relationship soured. The man was reportedly reluctant to tie to knot and this led to frequent fights between them.

On 18 May, the couple once again had a heated argument over marriage. Poonawala flew into a fit of rage and strangled her. After Walkar died, he panicked and wanted to evade arrest.

A trained chef, he chopped her body

It only gets grimmer from here. Poonawala chopped his partner’s body into 36 pieces. Reportedly trained as a chef, he was adept at using a meat cleaver.

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According to reports in the media, the man purchased a new 300-litre fridge to store the body parts. And over the next 18 days, he would step out of the house in the wee hours of the morning, around 2 am, to dispose of one chopped part at a time in the Mehrauli forest area.

His cover-up continued. To make sure that he was not caught, Poonawala burned incense sticks to keep the foul smell away.

He was “inspired” by the crime show Dexter, where the protagonist is a forensics expert who leads a parallel life as a vigilante serial killer, according to a report in NDTV.

The murder unravels

Walkar’s family, who lived in Maharashtra’s Palghar, was not talking to her because of disagreement over the relationship. But after a friend told the woman’s family that her phone was switched off for weeks, they got worried. That’s when her father Vikas Madan Walkar filed a missing persons’ report at Manikpur police station in Vasai.

After the father did not hear from his daughter for months, he went to Delhi but did not find her in her rented apartment. That’s when Maharastra Police intervened and referred the case to Delhi Police.

On 8 November, Vikas Madan complained at the Mehrauli police station. An FIR registered under Section 365 (kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) also alleged that Poonawala was abusive and assaulted Walkar often, reports India Today.

When police officers first called in Poonawala for questioning, he said in the statement that Walkar had broken up with him May after a quarrel and was clueless about her whereabouts. “He was bold but he would change his statements, investigators told the publication.

When Manikpur police first questioned Poonawala he said he was staying with Walkar. However, he kept changing his statement. They looked at her mobile data and bank records of the woman and found no transactions. Her phone too was switched off.

The police smelt a rat and shared inputs with their counterparts in Delhi. After using technical surveillance, they zeroed in on Poonawala. He was grilled and eventually confessed to the murder, revealing chilling details.

The police launched a search for the woman’s body and recovered a few bones. Poonawala was arrested on Monday.

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