Amid public scrutiny of the Shraddha murder case, the Delhi Police on Tuesday went about recreating the crime scene and dozens of cops spent nearly three hours combing the forest areas in South Delhi’s Chhatarpur.
The police teams collected 13 body parts of the 35 pieces of victim Shraddha Walkar on the basis of information provided by his killer live-in partner Aftab Ameen Poonawala. The murder weapon is still missing. The case is likely to be transferred to the crime branch.
According to the police, the body parts recovered on Tuesday from different areas will be sent for DNA analysis. If remains are confirmed to be of a human, they would be matched with the DNA of the father of the victim.
The CBI’s forensic team too reached Delhi’s Mehrauli police station to examine the fridge, where the victim’s body pieces were stored.
Head of the Department of Crime Scene Management at FSL Rohini Sanjeev Gupta said a two-member team of experts on Saturday visited the scene of crime and collected at least seven-eight bone pieces along with blood stains.
“These exhibits were handed over to the Investigating Officer. We are yet to receive the exhibits from police. A DNA analysis will be done to establish the identity of the woman,” he said. Blood samples of the woman’s parents would also be collected for DNA analysis.
The police said they will take Aaftab to some other places in the city too in pursuit of recovering Shraddha’s body parts and are also likely to approach dating App Bumble, on which the duo met. Shraddha’s father has, meanwhile, demanded death penalty for the victim and alleged it to be case of “love jehad”.
The police also took Aftab to the shop, from where he claimed to have bought the tools to cut up Shraddha’s body. CCTV footage of that day is no longer available, though Aftab claimed he bought the knife used in the crime from the shop along with garbage bags.
As the accused with his face covered with a white cloth and surrounded by police personnel, was taken to the woods, camera crews and journalists jostled with each other for his “shot”.
“The crime scene was recreated to understand and ascertain the sequence of events that led to the heinous crime and how he managed to locate the spots where different pieces could be dumped without inviting public glare,” a senior police official said.
Meanwhile, a Delhi doctor who treated Aftab, said the accused had visited him in May, the same month when Walkar was killed, for treating a wound. Dr Anil Kumar recalled Aftab was very aggressive and restless when he had come to him for treatment and when he asked him about his injury, he claimed he got hurt while cutting fruit. He added it was not a deep injury but a superficial one.
During investigation, it was also revealed that the owners of the Delhi house did not follow due process before renting the flat. The house owners Rohan and Ashok admitted that they did not approach the police for the mandatory verification while giving their apartment to the accused. As per standard practice, identity verification by the police is a must for giving any residential house to a tenant. The police are now probing if the decision to rent the flat in Delhi’s Chhatarpur area, days before the murder, was part of a conspiracy to kill Shraddha.
