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'Aaftab will kill me, cut me into pieces and throw me,' Shraddha told police in India in 2020

Victim's neighbour shares complaint letter written by her to authority

In the latest twist in the Shraddha Walkar murder case, a letter written by the victim to the Tulinj police station in Maharashtra's Palghar in 2020 has allegedly surfaced.

In the letter, she complained that the accused Aaftab Poonawala had beaten her and threatened to kill her.

The letter was reportedly shared by Shraddha's neighbour in Vasai with whom she had gone to the police station to file the complaint. The Maharashtra police have confirmed that the deceased had written the complaint letter on November 23, 2020, at the Tulinj police station.

In the complaint letter, Shraddha said that she "did not have the guts to go to the police" because Aaftab had threatened to kill her. However, she added that he tried to kill her on the day she was writing the letter. He threatened to kill her and cut her into pieces and throw her away.

"It's been six months he has been hitting me," the letter read.

The letter further claimed that Aaftab's parents were aware that he beat her up and that he tried to kill her. "I lived with him till date as we were supposed to get married soon and had the blessings of his family. Henceforth, I am not willing to live with him. So any kind of physical damage should be considered coming from him as he has been blackmailing me to kill me or hurt me whenever he sees me anywhere," the letter read.

The letter has surfaced a day after Aaftab on Tuesday told a Delhi court that he murdered his girlfriend in the "heat of the moment".

The accused was produced before the Saket court in Delhi on Tuesday after his five-day police custody expired. "What happened, happened in the heat of the moment," Aaftab told the court.

However, Apollo Hospital, senior consultant psychiatrist, Dr Sandeep Vohra on Tuesday reacted to Aftab's statement in Saket Court. "It cannot be a case of 'heat of the moment'," the top expert said.

"I will not agree to the claim that Aaftab murdered Shraddha in the heat of the moment. If there is something which happens in the heat of the moment you immediately feel guilty, if not immediately then later on. Many times you would hear cases like somebody shot someone or killed someone and surrendered at the police station and accepted his crime. So this case cannot be of the heat of the moment," Dr Vohra said.

Meanwhile, a court-sanctioned polygraphy test on Aaftab was initiated on Tuesday.

The assistant director of the Forensic Science Laboratory, Rohini, Sanjeev Gupta said the process of conducting a polygraph test on Aaftab has begun and the report will be out in a week's time.

The Delhi Police had previously said Aaftab, following his arrest in the case, confessed to killing his live-in partner in their apartment in West Delhi's Chhatarpur and chopping her body into 35 pieces.

"We've been directed by the Delhi Police and our director to process this case fast. We are working on some parameters that are important before conducting a narco test," Gupta said.

Aaftab is alleged to have preserved the chopped body parts in a refrigerator before dumping them in the forests of Chhatarpur.

Aaftab and Shraddha met on a dating site and moved in together as their relationship grew. On receipt of the complaint from Shraddha's father, Delhi Police registered an FIR on November 10.