Vikash Walker (Shraddha Walker’s Father)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Vikash Walker

• Vikash Walker is the father of Shraddha Walker, an Indian woman from Maharashtra, who was strangled to death by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawala in 2022.

• Reportedly, Vikash’s relationship with his wife was facing difficulties. According to Vikash, he separated from his wife, Suman Madan Walker, and started living at his mother’s house around four years before his wife’s demise.

  

• Shraddha and Aftab met through ‘Bumble,’ an online dating app, in 2018.

  

• Reportedly, they shifted to Delhi in March 2022 and started living in a rented house in the Chhatarpur area, Mehrauli. Some sources claim that they decided to live in Delhi after Shraddha’s parents did not accept their relationship. In contrast, some other sources claim that Shraddha accompanied Aftab to Delhi, where he got a new job in an IT firm.

• According to Shraddha’s friend Rajat Shukla, Shraddha was in a violent relationship with Aftab. Rajat, in an interview, mentioned that Shraddha once told her friends about Aftab’s aggressive behaviour and that she wanted to get out of this relationship, but she could not. Rajat Shukla, in the interview, said,
  

  Today suddenly the news flashed on the mobile of her murder. I was shaken to the core of my soul that my friend has been murdered. She had told us in 2019 that she was in a relationship since 2018. They lived together. Initially, they lived happily, but then Shraddha started saying that Aaftab beats her. She wanted to leave him but couldn’t do so.” ^[3]The Times of India

• Reportedly, the couple would often have frequent arguments, and their relationship started becoming sour. The duo even decided to take a trip to the hills in the month of March and April for a new beginning of their relationship. ^[4]The Times of India The couple, however, again started having arguments. On 18 May 2022, Aftab, in anger, after being pressurised by Shraddha to get married, strangled her to death and chopped off her body into 35 pieces using a saw and kept it in a 300-litre refrigerator, which he bought from the local market, in his rented flat in Delhi. Reportedly, Aftab threw the pieces in different places across the city in a row. According to some sources, Aftab and Shraddha would often argue over bringing household items and bearing daily expenses.

  

• Reportedly, after being informed by one of Shraddha’s friends in September 2022 about Shraddha’s disappearance for almost 2.5 months, Vikash Walker lodged a missing complaint at Manickpur police station in Vasai, Maharashtra on 12 October 2022. The case was later transferred to Mehrauli police station in New Delhi based on Shraddha’s last location. ^[5]The Times of India

• On 11 November 2022, Aftab Poonawala was arrested from his house in Chhatarpur under the IPC sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing the disappearance of evidence of an offence committed). ^[6]The Times of India
  

  

  

• Reportedly, Shraddha’s father, Vikash Walker, suspected Aftab’s involvement in the disappearance of his daughter and believed that there must be a ‘love jihad’ angle in the case of his daughter’s murder. In an interview, Vikash Walker said,
  

  I suspected a love jihad angle. We demand the death penalty for Aftab. I trust Delhi Police and the probe moving in the right direction. Shraddha was close to her uncle and didn’t talk to me much. I was never in touch with Aftab. I lodged the first complaint in Mumbai’s Vasai.” ^[7]DT Next

• According to sources, Shraddha, as a teen, and Vikash’s relationship was so strained that Shraddha told her friends and teachers in college that her father was not living with her family, and she was the only person earning in the family. ^[8]The Times of India

• During the investigation, it was found that Shraddha had feared that Aftab would cut her into pieces in a complaint, dated 23 November 2020, to the police at Tilunj in their hometown, Vasai, in Maharashtra. Reportedly, she registered the complaint by writing a letter to the cops after Aftab beat her up at a flat they shared. ^[9]NDTV In the letter, Shraddha wrote,
  

  Today he tried to kill me by suffocating me and he scares me and blackmails me that he will kill me, cut me up in pieces and throw me away. It’s been six months he has been hitting me but I did not have the guts to go to the police because he would threaten to kill me.”

  

• In an interview, Vikash Walker expressed his grief on losing his daughter and said that the only punishment he could think of giving Aftab was to cut him into 70 pieces. According to Vikash, Aftab had an eye on Shraddha’s property for which he brainwashed her. While talking about this in an interview, Vikash Walker said,
  

  Aftab had an eye on the property. He brainwashed my daughter. Shraddha explained a lot but she didn’t listen. Cut Aftab into 70 pieces. “

The missing FIR filed by Shraddha’s father, Vikash Madan Walkar