Mehrauli killing case: Hair, bones recovered by police confirmed to be of Shradha Walkar

PTI, Jan 4, 2023, 4:43 PM IST

Hair and bone samples sent for DNA mitochondrial profiling by police have been confirmed to be of Shradha Walkar who was killed by her 28-year-old live-in partner Aaftab Amin Poonawala, a senior official said here on Wednesday.

The bones and hair were recovered during searches from forest areas of Delhi NCR including Gurgaon and Mehrauli, the police said. Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Sagar Preet Hooda said the bone and hair samples from which DNA could not be extracted were sent to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) Hyderabad for ‘DNA Mitochondrial profiling’.

”On Wednesday, we received the result of the examination. One piece of bone and bunch of hair purported to be of deceased have matched with that of her father and brother which establishes the identity of the bone and hair to be that of Shradha Walkar,” he said. The bones will now be sent for autopsy which will be conducted by a medical board at the AIIMS, he added.

The gory details about Walkar’s murder shook the entire nation after the Delhi Police on November 12 arrested Poonawala who is currently in judicial custody. After allegedly strangling Walkar on May 18, Poonawala sawed her body into 35 pieces and kept them in a 300-litre fridge for almost three weeks at his residence before dumping them across the city over several days.