Aftab Poonawalla in police custody
| Photo Credit: PTI
A local court sent murder accused Aftab Poonawalla to 13-day judicial custody after his police remand expired on November 26. He has been sent to Tihar Jail, officers said.
Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Sagar Preet Hooda said the police had initiated the legal process for producing Poonawalla for further polygraph test sessions.
Aftab is accused of strangulating his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar on May 28, and chopping her body into multiple pieces and storing them in a refrigerator before disposing them in the Chhatarpur forest near his house over a period of three months.
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DNA test
The police are yet to receive the DNA test report in connection with the murder case, an officer said. According to the police, blood samples of Walkar’s father and brother have been collected for DNA matching with the body parts that have been recovered in the case so far.
The police are yet to find the victim’s skull, her remaining body parts, as well as the weapon used to dismember the body.
Poonawalla had on November 25 undergone the third session of polygraph tests at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in the national capital’s Rohini locality. Sources said that in order to check any discrepancies in his response, Poonawalla was asked the same questions again regarding his relationship with Shraddha, his family, and his professional background, among other queries. FSL’s experts have said they would analyse the recordings, prepare a final report, and submit it to the police within two to three days.
Based on the report, a decision will be taken on Poonawalla’s narco-analysis testing, which could also be carried out inside Tihar Jail by forensic experts, sources said.
The police had moved a plea before a Delhi court to subject Poonawalla to a polygraph and narco-analysis tests as he was “misleading the investigators” during interrogation.
(With PTI inputs.)
