She reportedly helped Shraddha Walker file a police complaint against Aftab Amin Poonawala after she was brutally murdered by her live-in partner in Delhi this year, in May.
“We (him and other friends) helped Shraddha file an FIR in 2020 after she contacted us for help saying Aftab beat her,” Rahul Rai, who identified himself as a friend of Shraddha’s, told ANI. Aftab was taken home.” He said that “the police officer suggested detaining him for interrogation, but she replied that such things happen in relationships.”
The police called Rahul over to the station the day after she filed the complaint, she claimed.
She said her friend recalled him beating her multiple times and trying to kill her before, so she was afraid of him killing her.
She had also talked to Rahul about her partner’s drug abuse, he claimed, adding that Aftab locked her up at home and talked to other girls.
Rahul said that it never occurred to him that the live-in relationship she shared with Aftab would end so horribly. “She said, ‘don’t worry, such things happen. We haven’t been in touch since,” Rahul said.
An investigation into the death of Shraddha was underway when Rahul made his statement.
An ongoing investigation into the murder case was reviewed at a high-level meeting on Friday by the Delhi Police.
Senior officers from South Delhi attended the meeting, which was chaired by joint commissioner of police Meenu Choudhary.
Police are also investigating a body found in the East Delhi area this year, and have directed officers to match its DNA with the body parts recovered from the Mumbai woman.
DNA from body parts found in the East Delhi area has also been preserved by the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), police said.
Police searched on Friday for the remaining pieces of the victim’s body and the weapon used to kill her at Aftab’s former workplace in Gurugram.
The body of Aftab’s live-in partner was chopped into 35 pieces and thrown in the forests of Chhatarpur after he confessed to killing her and dumping it. It is alleged that he committed the crime while high on marijuana, sources say