Sanjay Raut demands 'public hanging' of Shraddha Walkar's killer

Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Wednesday said Aaftab Amin Poonawala, who allegedly killed his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar and chopped her body chopped into 35 pieces before dumping them across Delhi – should be "hanged publicly". The leader of the Uddhav Thackeray faction's Shiv Sena also raised a word of caution for women to be alert while trusting a person.

“The killer of Shraddha should be hanged publicly and our girls should be alert while trusting any person. Call it ‘Love Jihad’ or anything else but it is our girls who are dying,” Raut said, as quoted by news agency ANI. Raut went on to say that the law cannot do anything in cases like these but “the society has to descend” to deal with it.

Walker, a call-centre employee from Mumbai, was allegedly murdered by her live-in partner Poonawala, months after they moved to the national capital. They were living in a multi-storey apartment in New Delhi's Chattarpur area.

Here's what we know so far about Shraddha Walkar murder case:

• Shraddha Walkar was strangled on May 18 by Poonawala, according to the police. He had kept her body parts in a newly purchased refrigerator for weeks before he started dumping them across Delhi at 2am over several days.
• Walkar's death came to light after her friends and family lodged a missing person's complaint. During the investigation, the police caught Poonawala in several lies in his initial statement. The accused had attempted to dupe both Delhi and Mumbai Police in the initial days of the probe.
• The breakthrough moment was when the police retrieved the couple's bank statements which showed a transaction of ₹54,000 from Walkar's net banking account app to Poonawala's account on May 26.
• Earlier on Tuesday, the Delhi Police took Poonawala to the forest area in Delhi's Mehrauli – one of the sites where pieces of Walkar's body were suspected to be dumped. The recovered body parts have been sent for medical examination.
• The Delhi Police has also taken the DNA samples of Shraddha's father Vikas Walker to match with the recovered body parts and blood sample. The police had reportedly found traces of blood in the kitchen of the two-bedroom apartment Walkar shared with Poonawala.
• Walkar's head and the murder weapon are yet to be recovered. Her phone, allegedly disposed of in Mumbai, is also yet to be recovered. Poonawala had tried to get rid of all physical evidence connecting the dots to Shraddha's murder, the police said, with only the digital evidence yet to be erased.
• The police are reportedly also scanning the CCTV footage to find out the people Poonawala met with following the murder. A common friend of the couple is likely to be interrogated in the case.
• At the same time, sources said the Delhi Police will conduct a narco test of Poonawala after receiving permission from a Delhi court. The tests could possibly help understand the killer's mental state, police said.