While English-language mainstream media continues to dismiss love jihad as a “conspiracy theory”, Delhi Police sources revealed today that Aaftab Amin Poonawalla dated at least 15 (if not 20) women after murdering Shraddha Walkar, targeting some of them even when the victim was alive. And while the police did not mention religion, the names of the women that the murderer of Shraddha — he confessed during a polygraph test yesterday — targeted using different dating apps leave no doubt they are all Hindu.
According to actress Sagarika Shona Suman, who had met Aaftab’s live-in partner Shraddha months earlier, the murderer was spending about Rs 6,000 a week on meeting and dating women, every time pretending he was single, never married and “unattached”.
A social activist Shreha Dhargalkar who spoke to Shraddha Walkar in Mumbai, also confirmed that Shraddha knew about Aftab’s sexual escapades and the couple quarrelled about it almost daily. She tried to reason witb Aftab to mend his ways, but he refused to change his promiscuous sexual nature.
Aaftab told the police he had met all his girlfriends on the Bumble dating app. Delhi Police received from Bumble the details of the profile of Aaftab, who murdered Shraddha and chopped her body into 35 pieces.
Why target Hindu women? This is what Aaftab told the police
A week after the news of the crime surfaced, police had come to know of only five or six former and present girlfriends of Aaftab. Last week, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma referred to the Shraddha murder case and said, “Somebody from the police asked Aaftab Poonawala, ‘Why do you date only Hindu women?’ To this, he said Hindus are emotional’.”
“A boy named Aaftab Poonawala from Mumbai convinced Shraddha Walkar to come to Delhi, assuring her to get married. However, he didn’t get married and instead killed her and chopped her body into 35 pieces. He kept her mutilated body inside a fridge and in the meantime, he invited other women to his flat for dates,” the Assam chief minister said last week.
“When the police asked him, ‘why do you bring only Hindu women?’ Aaftab said Hindus are emotional. This is not just the story of Aaftab, there are several similar Aaftab-Shraddha incidents in the country. There is a strong need for a stringent law against Love Jihad,” Sarma said.
One of the Hindu women that the jihadi brought home when Shraddha’s body in many parts lay in his fridge
One of the Hindu women targeted is a psychiatrist. Aaftab had brought her home when the body of Shraddha severed in 35 parts was lying in a refrigerator in that house.
According to the psychiatrist-girlfriend of Aaftab, his behaviour never gave her a cause for concern. She told the police that she had first run into Aaftab in May through a dating app.
One of the women, a psychiatrist who visited Aaftab’s Chhatarpur house, said that she was in shock. She said that Aaftab had gifted her a ring on 12 October, which turned out to belong to Shraddha.
Aaftab had the last session of the polygraph test at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Rohini of Delhi on 29 November. Confession in a polygraph or narco test is not admissible in court, but either exercise does give the police a direction for their investigation. Confessions at a polygraph test may also lead to the recovery of some material evidence. The suspected murderer’s narco-analysis test remains to be done.
Aaftab was arrested on 12 November. He is currently is in judicial custody. It is from his confession that the police pieced together the grisly murder that took place in Delhi in May and came to light six months later by when Aaftab had disposed of the body parts in different forest areas.
During interrogation, Aaftab revealed several gory details of how he strangled Shraddha during an argument and then chopped her body in 35 pieces to dispose them of one by one without raising suspicion. The day after murdering Shraddha, Aaftab bought a freezer to store the body parts.
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