Aaftab Poonawala used to give cigarette burns to Shraddha Walkar, claims friend
Shukla added that her friends then visited Poonawala and threatened to file a police complaint if he continued to ill-treat her.
Rajat Shukla, a friend of Shraddha Walkar who was brutally killed in May, has claimed that her live-in partner Aaftab Amin Poonawala used to give her cigarette burns, but she desisted from approaching the police as she wanted to give him "another chance", news agency PTI.
"In 2021, Shradda shared with one of her close woman friends that Aaftab burnt her with cigarettes on her back, and we felt bad after hearing about this," PTI quoted Shukla as saying.
Shukla added that her friends then visited Poonawala and threatened to file a police complaint if he continued to ill-treat her. "It was Shraddha who asked us to give him one more chance, and I think that cost her her life," Shukla said.
Poonawala allegedly strangled Shraddha and sawed her body into 35 pieces which he kept in a 300-litre fridge for almost three weeks at his residence in South Delhi's Mehrauli before dumping them across the city over several days. The murder occurred in May.
Meanwhile, the second session of the polygraph test on Poonawala was underway at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Rohini. The test could not be conducted on Wednesday as the 28-year-old accused was down with fever and cold.
FSL Rohini director Deepa Verma said, "The test is going on and if need be, the accused can be called again on Friday."
