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Vikas Madan Walkar, father of Shraddha Walkar who was brutally murdered by live-in partner Aftab Poonawala in Delhi's Merauli in 2022, died due to a heart attack in Maharashtra on Sunday.
Vikas Walkar was reportedly residing in Maharashtra's Vasai with his son. He was rushed to a hospital after his health suddenly deteriorated in the early hours of Sunday where he later passed away. Vasai Police later told the media that Vikas Walkar died due to a cardiac arrest.
Vikas and his family have been in the forefront of a legal battle since 2022. He wanted to conduct Shradhha's last rites and was waiting for the Delhi Police to hand over the remains of her bones, recovered in the Mehrauli forest, Mirror Now said in a report. Vikas was depressed over the delay in getting the ashes of his daughter, the report added.
Shraddha Walkar case
Aftab Poonawala is accused of strangling his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar on May 18, 2022, before hacking her body into pieces. Poonawala is accused of sawing her body into pieces and keeping them in a refrigerator for almost three weeks at his rented house in south Delhi's Mehrauli. He later threw the pieces at different places in the national capital to avoid getting caught.
Poonawala had tried to mislead police by giving a false statement that after murdering Walkar, he had burnt her body pieces and after grinding the bones with a stone grinder, blown or thrown away the powder, the charge sheet said.
According to excerpts from the 6,629-page-long charge sheet, accessed by PTI, soon after the murder of Walkar, the accused again came in contact with several girls through Bumble', a dating app through which he came to know Walkar.
He came in contact with one such girl who is a psychologist and called (her)... to his flat. However, when she used to visit his flat, Aaftab used to clean the fridge and used to put the body parts of Shraddha on the upper shelf and at times on the lower shelf of the kitchen, the chargesheet said.
Vikas Madan Walkar was cross-examined as a prosecution witness by accused Aaftab Amin Poonawala's counsel. In 2023, he had denied having any knowledge about his daughter consuming LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide), a synthetic chemical-based drug categorised as a hallucinogen.
