Shraddha Walkar: ‘That short rebel’ caught in a toxic loop

The girl from Mumbai whose gruesome killing has put her in the national spotlight was rather private, to the extent that for five months after her death, family and friends remained oblivious that she had gone ominously silent.

Shraddha Walkar, petite, pierce-lipped and sporting an edgy bob saw herself as something of a rebel — that short rebel — was her Instagram handle. To those who knew her, well or fleetingly, she came across as both cool and slightly aloof.

Shraddha grew up in Vasai, Mumbai’s far-flung northern suburb, the daughter of a homemaker and an engineer who ran an inverters’ business. (PTI)

The girl from Mumbai whose gruesome killing has put her in the national spotlight was rather private, to the extent that for five months after her death, family and friends remained oblivious that she had gone ominously silent. As an avid nation wants to know more, Shraddha remains an elusive figure. The one person who could give the best account of her, who knew her most closely after her mother, is her boyfriend, now in custody of Delhi Police for her alleged murder.

What emerges from multiple conversations with police, friends, neighbours and family is the portrait of a deeply troubled young woman who felt compelled to carry her burdens alone. Shraddha grew up in Vasai, Mumbai’s far-flung northern suburb, the daughter of a homemaker and an engineer who ran an inverters’ business. The Walkars were comfortably off if not affluent. They lived in a home owned by the family matriarch, Harshala Walkar.

What their middle-class home camouflaged was the simmering tensions between the parents, Vikas and Suman Walkar. Their neighbours at Sanskriti Society say they were shocked when Vikas Walkar moved out of the family house into his mother’s home a short distance away in 2014. There had been no raised voices, nocturnal fights or complaints to indicate that there was something amiss between Walkar and his sickly wife.

Shraddha was 19, just finishing junior college, when the separation happened. Her brother Shree was 14, still young to comprehend its enormity. Soon after their separation, Suman was diagnosed with a heart condition and became virtually confined to the house. For some months, mother and daughter became inseparable until Shraddha started attending Ruparel College at Matunga for her bachelors in Mass Media. Through these tumultuous times in her life, her one close friend appears to be Laxman Nadar, who was the one to alert her father that Shraddha had not been heard from in months. In college, she was an unremarkable student and did not leave any distinct impression either on her teachers or fellow students. Her relationship with her father deteriorated steadily and he confessed to a friend of his that his daughter had “stopped listening to him”.

After her Bachelor’s degree, Shraddha joined Decathlon’s BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) unit at Malad, and started giving money to her mother even though Vikas Walkar took care of his family’s financial needs. It was also around this time, in late 2018, the dating app Bumble was launched in India. Actor Priyanka Chopra was one of their early backers and the app’s distinctive yellow hoarding bloomed across Mumbai’s skyline.

“Shraddha was not socially awkward by nature and definitely did not need any app to meet new people. I think she got on to Bumble more out of peer pressure and curiosity than anything else,” says Sharda Jaiswal, a friend from the neighbourhood. “As luck would have it, she matched with Aaftab.”

Aaftab had just left his job as a sous chef at one of the restaurants at Taj, Santacruz, and turned food blogger. He and his brother Ahad, a photographer, together ran an Instagram account, hungrychokro_escapades. Later, Aaftab also collaborated for promotional events with the Mumbai restaurant Pa Pa Ya, and the Taj, Santacruz.

Shraddha’s friends describe Aaftab as “smooth and smart” and recall Shraddha being rather impressed by him. They both liked smoking up, shared a love for trekking and the outdoors, and often went on long rides on Aaftab’s Bajaj Avenger. “Shraddha had a thing for bikes. Aaftab would often pick her up at Vasai station after she returned from work and the two of them would go on long rides almost every night ultimately stopping at one of the many beaches in Vasai and Virar. They would sit together until dawn,” a friend who knew both Shraddha and Aaftab said on the condition they not be named.

As they grew closer, Aaftab introduced her to his friends and all of them would often party together. The Vasai fort, a short walk from Shraddha’s house, became their favourite hang-out place. There was nothing so far, says their friend, to indicate there was anything out of the ordinary about their love story.

Aaftab, the son of a wholesale footwear supplier, came from a Khoja family, and dreamt of being an entrepreneur. Nothing caught his interest for long. He enrolled for a Bachelor’s degree in Management Studies at Mumbai’s LS Raheja College but dropped out after two years, eventually completing his degree after a year’s break. He worked as a sous chef but dropped that to become a food blogger. It was at Shraddha’s insistence that he joined the BPO where she worked. Within six months of meeting him, Shraddha announced to her family that she would be moving in with Aaftab.

Vikas Walkar says both he and his wife were against the relationship. He told HT that after Shraddha’s announcement, he went to see Aaftab’s parents to see if they could dissuade him. “I was not welcomed and they told me not to come to their house again.” The couple rented a flat on an 11-month lease in the neighbouring suburb of Naigaon. It was only when they had started living together that the first signs of Aaftab’s violent streak emerged. Instances of verbal abuse were followed by physical violence. Vikas Walkar told the police that Shraddha had confided in her mother about the violence. “She told her mother every little thing but her mother was too unwell to do much,” he said in his police statement. It is not clear, given their estrangement, how much Vikas Walkar knew at this point.

As instances of Aaftab’s violent behaviour became more frequent, followed invariably by contrition and threats of self-harm if she left him, Shraddha spoke to several people about his erratic behaviour. Karan Behri, her manager at the Decathlon BPO, says that on the morning of November 23, 2020, he was shocked to receive a WhatsApp message from Shraddha saying she needed help as Aaftab had beaten her up. “I was really worried and I didn’t know what to do so I called another colleague of ours, Gladwin Rodrigues, who stays in Vasai to go check on her.”

And yet despite the argument, the fights, the couple moved into another home after their first lease expired. At Regal Apartments in Naigaon’s Evershine City Complex, they described themselves as a married couple. The building watchman would later tell Vikas Walkar that he often heard sounds of fighting but like the other neighbours in that building, he too assumed that it was none of his business to interfere in marital squabbles.

In January 2020, Shraddha’s mother died and it was she who performed the last rites and not the estranged husband. At the funeral, she met her father but such was the bitterness she felt towards her father that she barely exchanged a few words. However, just a month later, she met her father, and just as she had with her mother, she told him about the abuse and violence she was facing at Aaftab’s hands. “I told her to leave him and to come back home, but she said that she was 25 years old and capable of fighting her own battles. She told me not to interfere in her life,” Vikas Walkar told the police.

Rajesh Naik, a family friend of the Walkars, recalls how disturbed Vikas was after this conversation with Shraddha. “Vikas told us how his daughter wasn’t listening to him. I told him that he was her father and if anyone could help her, he could. I said that he needed to try harder and to make her understand that he was there for her,” says Naik.

By now, Shraddha and Aaftab’s relationship had fallen into a toxic pattern of abuse and reconciliation. But none of their trips to the hills or Shraddha playing dress up and getting photographed by a fashion photographer, could make up for the cycle of violence.When Behri, the manager at the Decathlon BPO, asked his colleague Gladwin Rodrigues to check on Shraddha, he was out of town and sent his brother, Godwin Rodrigues, instead.He recalls he met Shraddha with BJP worker Rahul Rai and the two of them took her to Tullinj police station to lodge a complaint. They also wanted her to get a medical examination so the FIR could be lodged. At the last moment, she got cold feet and backed out from filing an FIR, settling for a verbal complaint instead. This was on November 23.

On December 3, she was admitted at Ozone Multi-speciality Hospital in Nallasopara for three days. The hospital report, accessed by HT, states that Shraddha came with several ailments, including severe back pain, nausea, neck pain and difficulty in moving her neck, which she had been suffering for the last four to five days. A medical check-up revealed tenderness in her abdomen as well as her spine, and contusions in the abdomen and internal injuries. She was advised complete bed rest for a few days, along with painkillers and physiotherapy.

Dr Shivprasad Shinde from the hospital recalls Aaftab had introduced himself as her husband when she was admitted, and that the couple never came for a follow-up visit after her discharge. “She was hesitant to talk about what caused her injuries, but they were consistent with physical assault,” says Dr Shinde.

At another date, she reached out to Laxman Nadar to tell him that her relationship with Aaftab had turned “toxic beyond repair”. Nadar says he went to their house and urged Shraddha to get in touch with the police, which she declined saying Aaftab had threatened to kill himself if she ever called the cops. “I also didn’t call the police but I did warn Aaftab against harming her.”

In May 2021, Shraddha went to Mindtattoo parlour in Vasai to get her lower lip pierced to wear a ring and a few days later she returned to add a stud, recalls Mindtattoo owner Omkar Dasane. Shraddha, ‘that short rebel’, now just sported the accoutrements of rebellion. In her day-to-day life, she had slipped into being a helpless woman, caught in a cycle of vicious abuse, that everyone noticed, but did not care sufficiently to pull her out of.