INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
NEW DELHI: In south Delhi's Chhatarpur Pahadi, the people in the neighbourhood where Shraddha Walkar was murdered, have found their feet
back in normalcy a year after the locality became the centre of national news.The murder and dismembering of Shraddha Walkar by her live-in
partner Aaftab Amin Poonawala had captured headlines and thrust the neighbourhood into unforeseen and undesirable attention.Poonawala, a
The trial is on.TOI visited the flat on the first floor of the building where the murder was committed
It is locked and uninhabited.The people in the neighbourhood spoke about how a wedding, the first since the murder, was set to take place in
the same building in February
The wedding in our family will perhaps help wipe out the bad memories," a resident of the building said.When asked about Poonawala, some
residents said they vaguely recalled the man as they seldom saw him
He used to behave like a normal person," he said.Landlords were worried about rents going down and people leaving due to fear.Just after the
incident, a tenant on the ground floor of the same building left
Our children were frightened for some weeks but after that, they played outside every day."Rajesh, a plumber who lives nearby, said he was
called to court once, where he saw Aaftab
He had no remorse on his face, he said
"I had seen the couple...
It has been a year and residents have slowly forgotten the incident," he said.Poonawala and Shraddha were from Vasai, near Mumbai, and had
shifted to Delhi in May 2022
He killed Shraddha on May 18 last year
The police filed a chargesheet earlier this year
It said that after killing Shraddha, the chef went to a nearby shop, purchased a saw, three blades, a hammer and plastic clips
He came back to the flat and moved the body to the bathroom and severed her hands at the wrist with a saw and put them in a polybag.Over the
next four to five days, Poonawala chopped the body into 18 pieces and got rid of them bit by bit.Poonawala even met another woman through a
He also gave Shradha's ring to her
The woman is a prime witness.A Tihar official said: "There is not much change in his security from earlier."
