Delhi murder: Couple met on dating app in 2019, worked in same store

Aaftab Amin Poonawala, 28, who allegedly murdered his live-in partner Shraddha Vikas Walkar, 27, at their south Delhi flat, first met her in Maharashtra’s Vasai through a dating app in 2019, a police officer aware of the investigation said on Monday.

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According to the police, the couple started working at a Decathelon store in Mumbai, and had by end of 2019, had started living together in Vasai -- despite opposition from both families to their relationship -- and were working at a call centre in Mumbai. In March-April this year, the couple went on holiday to Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, before shifting to Delhi in the first week of May, first to a friend’s house, and then to a rented accommodation in south Delhi’s Chhatarpur Pahadi on May 15.

On May 18, Poonawala allegedly killed Walkar. Additional deputy commissioner of police (south) Ankit Chauhan said that Poonawala, during interrogation, confessed to murdering Walkar because she had been asking him to marry her.

However, Walkar’s father Vikas Madan Walkar has said in the first information report (FIR) registered in Mumbai that the two met at a call centre that both worked at sometime in 2019. He also claimed that his daughter wanted to marry Poonawala, but that they were against the interfaith relationship, following which Walkar left her parents’ house.

Meanwhile, the couple’s friends claimed that the first signs of strains in the relationship began due to their parents’ opposition to the relationship, even though Walkar was not on speaking terms with her father anymore.

“No untoward incident took place during the first eight-nine months of their dating. But the moment the parents of both sides started opposing their relationship due to their different religious beliefs, altercations over petty issues became a routine affair for them. When they shifted to Delhi, it became worse. Both had lost faith with each other,” said one of their Delhi-based friends, asking not to be named.

Another friend said when they shifted to Delhi, neither had a proper job offer. “Perhaps financial constraints spoiled their relationship,” the friend said.