Mehrauli Murder: Contrary To Claims On Social Media, Aaftab Poonawala Is From The Muslim Community

Following the gruesome murder of 26-year-old Shraddha Walker in Delhi's Mehrauli, various claims about the religious identity of her murderer have gone viral across social media. Walker's partner, 27-year-old Aaftab Poonawala, has been accused of carrying out her murder over six months ago.

On May 20, 2022, Poonawala allegedly strangled his live-in partner Shraddha Walker. He then dismembered her body into 35 parts which he kept in a 300-liter fridge. Over the next few weeks, the accused dumped the pieces of her body in different parts of the city.

Claim:

A user, @Storyani_1761 uploaded screenshots from Aaftab Poonawala's Instagram and Facebook. The first image shows Poonawala offering a sweet to an idol of Lord Ganesha, which is captioned, "O Lord Ganesha, accept my offerings to you." The second image shows his Facebook bio, where it is stated that his religious views adhere to Humanism.

The caption of the post reads, "Aftab amin poonawalla is not Muslim".

Several Twitter users commented that Aftab Poonawala belonged to the Parsi community and was not a Muslim.

Another user, @YetOtherHuman, has made the claim linking to an NDTV article in their tweet.

Fact Check:

The Logical Indian Fact-Check team verified the viral claim and found it to be false. Aaftab Poonawala belongs to the Muslim community.

We checked the social media pages of the accused to verify whether the information being circulated across social media is factual. We came across the Facebook account of Aaftab Poonawala after conducting a keyword search.

We noticed that in the Facebook contact and basic info section of the Facebook account, his religious views have indeed been stated as Humanism.

We checked the accused's Instagram profile, where we came across an Instagram post. The post was a selfie of the accused where he argued with another user named @zloymom regarding his religious identity.

In the comments, he had written, "I am a Muslim, and the other tern you're is Hindu. Lord Krishna is the God of Hindus. May I ask why the certain inquisitiveness about my religion?"

We then conducted a keyword search and came across a report by the Hindustan Times published on November 14, 2022. The report stated, "Both sets of parents were opposed to the match because Poonawala is a Muslim and Walkar was a Hindu, according to police and relatives."

We came across a copy of the First Information Report of the gruesome incident. The FIR was filed by the victim's father, where he noted down that his daughter had said in 2019 that she was in a live-in relationship with the accused.

"My wife and I disagreed with her choices as her partner was a Muslim. Inter-caste and inter-religion marriage are not accepted in our social circle," the victim's father says in the FIR.

Conclusion:

As per social media posts, the accused, Aftab Poonawala, himself stated that he belonged to the Muslim community. The FIR copy states that the accused belongs to the Muslim community as well. Thus, we can conclude that the accused does not belong to any religious community apart from Islam.

If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.

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