The Year of Shock: From the Shraddha Walkar murder to Shinzo Abe’s assassination, the news that horrified us

The year 2022 has delivered more shockers than one would expect. It is a year plagued by war, civic unrest, cost-of-living crisis and crimes – some cases more horrific than others.

In the past 12 months, some stories left sent a chill down our spine. Here’s a recap of incidents that made us question our faith in humanity. And here’s hoping that the coming year will drop fewer bombshells.

The Shraddha Walkar murder

In mid-November, a murder most foul sent shockwaves across the country. Delhi Police arrested a young man — Aftab Amin Poonawala — on allegations of murdering his live-in partner, Shraddha Walkar, of three years. The case came to light more than nine months after the gruesome killing.

On May 18, the 28-year-old man, originally hailing from Maharashtra’s Vasai, strangled Shraddha to death after the two squabbled. What he did later left everyone shaken. He chopped up her body into 36 pieces, stored them in a fridge at their rented apartment for months and, went around disposing them off — a piece at a time — in different parts of Delhi.

The crime was dubbed “the fridge murder” and Aftab was called ‘Delhi’s Dexter’ — he was reportedly inspired by the US crime thriller. Soon details of their toxic relationship emerged – Aftab reportedly “abused and beat up” his partner on several occasions.

The horror led to a series of copycat murders ; two Uttar Pradesh men used their “doctor” skills to chop up their 40-year-old tenant. An Andhra man packed a woman he murdered in a zip pouch. A mother-son duo in Delhi killed a man and stored his body in a refrigerator.

The Shraddha murder is one of those cases that will continue to haunt us years later.

Mass graves in Ukraine

On 24 February, Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to “ denazify ” the country. As Moscow launched its offensive, reports and evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide started emerging. The Russian forces left a trail of death and destruction.

In April, the mayor of Mariupol said thousands of bodies were discovered in a mass grave discovered after Russian soldiers withdrew from that city. Later in Bucha, the bodies of 458 people were found.

In September, seven months into the war, more than 440 bodies, including those of civilians and children, were found in Izium with many of them bearing signs of torture such as broken bones and hands tied behind their backs.

Serhii Bolvinov, the chief police investigator for the Kharkiv region, reported that there were further burial sites in other parts of the Kharkiv region.

The graves are a grim and horrific reminder of just how the pain and agony this war has caused. And it is far from over yet. A Forbes report pointed out, “As long as this war continues, it is highly likely that more mass graves and mass burial sites will be discovered in regions occupied by Putin’s army.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was quoted as saying after the discovery of the graves, “For these murders, for these tortures, for these arms torn off by explosions that lie on the streets. For shots in the back of the head of tied people. This is how the Russian state will now be perceived. This is your image.”

Kerala human sacrifice case

You’d think human sacrifices are a thing of the past. But a chilling case emerged in early October from Elanthoor village in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district. Two women were allegedly sacrificed by a couple who were convinced by an “occult practitioner” that it would change their fortunes.

The police arrested Bhagaval Singh, his wife Laila, and Rasheed alias Muhammad Shafi, the main accused, for the crime. A Perumbavoor native, Shafia was suspected to have brought the now-deceased women to the couple’s house, where the “sacrifice” was done.

The authorities reported that the couple had killed the women — Padma and Roslyn, both said to be in their early 50s — and eaten parts of them to gain wealth and help preserve their youth.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was quoted as saying that the incident had “shocked the human conscience” and that abducting and killing people for superstitious reasons was a crime “beyond imagination in a state like Kerala”.

The murders called for a discussion on the need for national laws against black magic .

Shinzo Abe’s assassination

Japan is known to be a peaceful nation with gun crimes being an anomaly. However, that changed on 8 July when Shinzo Abe — Japan’s former prime minister, who was campaigning for his party in the city of Nara — was assassinated. Abe was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister; he held office in 2006 for a year and then again from 2012 to 2020, before stepping down citing health reasons.

The 41-year-old gunman, Tetsuya Yamagami, was quickly taken into custody, but Abe couldn’t survive the two bullet wounds to his neck. Later, Yamagami confessed to the crime, revealing his motive: a grudge against the Unification church or ‘Moonies’ , who he believed had links to Abe.

The assassination had far-reaching political implications too. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s popularity has plunged since the killing, and he had to shuffle the Cabinet to purge members with ties to the religious group.

Morbi Bridge collapse

On 30 October, a Sunday outing turned into nightmare when 135 people, most of them women, children and the elderly, died after a footbridge, which was a famous tourist spot in Gujarat, snapped, plunging the hundreds into the waters below.

Morbi Bridge , an over-100-year-old suspension bridge had reopened just five days before the mishap following repairs.

According to eye-witnesses, some 200 people were estimated to have been on the bridge across the Machchhu River in the town of Morbi when it collapsed around 6:30 pm. A video, which went viral in the aftermath of the collapse, showed some of the men shaking the bridge before the structure gave way. However, Gujarat’s home minister Harsh Sanghavi said on 31 October that a cable appeared to have snapped.

But how did the cable snap if the British-era construction had undergone repairs? Fingers were pointed at Oreva , which was contracted to maintain the bridge since 2008. Since the collapse, police have arrested nine people associated with Oreva, including two managers and two ticket clerks on its payroll, as well as two contractors and three security guards it had hired. They are being investigated for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

Iran’s deadly clampdown on protests

When 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in suspicious circumstances after being arrested by Iran’s morality police in September, it triggered unprecedented protests in the conservative nation.

Women took to the streets, cutting their hair and shouting anti-regime chants with thousands of others joining in, causing authorities to implement an internet blackout. But nothing could stop the brave Iranian protesters, except for death.

To clamp down on the protests, the government killed and imprisoned protesters. According to human rights activists, until 25 November, 448 people had been killed, of those 63 were minors .

Iran has also started executing protesters after convicting them of “enmity against God”. On 12 December, 23-year-old Majidreza Rahnavard was publicly hanged in the city of Mashhad. This came after another 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari had been executed a week ago.

Several Iranian clerics and legal experts have criticised the use of capital punishment.

Overturning Roe v Wade decision

Liberal Americans and women all over the world wept in June when the United States Supreme Court officially reversed the crucial Roe v Wade order , declaring that the constitutional right to abortion, upheld for nearly a half century, no longer existed.

The decision, which had been leaked earlier in May, still came as a shocker, as it meant that abortion rights were rolled back in nearly half of the states and more restrictions were likely to follow. For all practical purposes, abortion will not be available in large swathes of America.

Experts also note that the reversal of this decision will also make it more difficult for some Americans to access assisted reproductive technology, like in vitro fertilisation (IVF), and could also potentially affect medical care for miscarriages.

The overturning of the decision has also led to the possibility that other landmark cases like Griswold v Connecticut (1965), which guaranteed married couples the right to use contraception, and Obergefell v Hodges (2015), which legalised same-sex marriage nationwide could be reviewed in the future.

Uvalde shooting

On the morning of 24 May, a gunman armed with an AR-15 walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom, killing 19 children and two teachers. Hours before the shooting, the accused, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, had shot and critically wounded his grandmother.

Ultimately, it was a US Border Patrol agent, and not police officers outside the building, who killed Ramos at the scene. The attack had gone on for over an hour before that.

Termed the deadliest shooting at an elementary school since Sandy Hook, the 22nd at a school in 2022, the Uvalde rampage once again raised questions once again about gun laws in America.

The attack raised questions about the ineffectiveness of Texas’s top law enforcement agency in stopping the shooting. New audio showed that it knew children were trapped in Robb Elementary more than 30 minutes before anyone shot the gunman and rescued them.

The incident led President Joe Biden to sign into law the first major gun safety legislation passed by Congress in nearly 30 years. It prevents people convicted of domestic abuse from owning a gun. It also expands background checks on those between the ages of 18 and 21 seeking to buy a gun.

While signing the bill into law, Biden said: “While this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives.”

With inputs from agencies

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