(Trigger Warning: Descriptions of violence)
"He will hunt me down, he will try to kill me."
Shraddha Walkar, who was allegedly murdered by her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala in May 2022, said these words in purported audio clips submitted by the prosecution before a Delhi court on Monday, 20 March, according to The Indian Express.
Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad, who appeared for the state, played the audio clips at Saket district court as evidence of the couple's "violent" relationship.
The audio recordings were sourced from an online counselling app that Walkar and Poonawala had used to attend two therapy sessions in August 2021.
What Did Walkar Say in the Audio Clips?
In one of the sessions with a psychologist – as heard in the purported audio clips – Walkar said that Aaftab would often beat her and refused to "talk it out."
"Not only physical violence but it leads Aaftab to almost killing me. This is not the first time he tried to kill me… I beg, when you are hitting me to at least not hit, to talk it out. It has been two years since I have been telling you to talk it out."Walkar said, according to The Indian Express
She also said that Aaftab had tried to kill her several times, and that once, he had grabbed her neck so tightly that she could not "breathe for 30 seconds."
"Whenever I start ranting about my anger, if he is somewhere around… he will find me, he will hunt me down, he will try to kill me, that there is the problem… I don't know how many times he tried to kill me; this is not the first time he tried to kill me… The way he grabbed my neck… I was unable to breathe for 30 seconds or a little bit more than that," she is heard saying in the audio clip.
The prosecution also produced a complaint that Walkar had submitted in 2020 to the Vasai Police in Mumbai.
"Today, he [Poonawala] tried to kill me by suffocating me and he scares and blackmails me that he will kill me, cut me up in pieces and throw me away," Walkar's complaint read.
According to the Delhi Police, Poonawala strangled Walkar to death in May 2022 after an argument broke out between the two over her meeting a man she reportedly got to know through a dating app, reported The Indian Express.
He chopped her body into pieces, stored them in a refrigerator, and disposed them of over the next few months. The murder came to light in November 2022 when the police were investigating a missing persons complaint.
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