New Delhi: A doctor who treated Aftab Amin Poonawalla, accused of murdering his live-in partner, chopping the body into pieces and dumping them in a forest area, said the accused had visited him in May, the same month when the woman was killed, for treating a wound.
Dr Anil Kumar recalled Poonawalla was very aggressive and restless when he had come to him for treatment and when he asked him about his injury, he claimed he got hurt while cutting fruit.
"In May, he came in the morning hours. My assistant told me that one person has come with an injury. When I saw him, I found it was not a deep injury but a superficial one.
"The underline structure was intact. When I asked him how he sustained this injury, he replied it was while he was cutting fruit. I did not have any doubt as it was a small clean knife cut," said Kumar.
He said 28-year-old Poonawalla was a very bold and confident person when he met him for the first time during the treatment.
"Two days ago, police brought him to my hospital and asked whether I treated this guy. I recognised him and said yes.
"He was very aggressive and restless when he came for the treatment. He looked in to my eyes while speaking. He was very bold and confident. He was speaking in English and told me he was from Mumbai and came to Delhi as the city has good opportunities in the IT sector," Kumar said.
"When police informed me about the incident, I was shocked and never thought that this person had done something like this.
"My wife is also from Matunga in Mumbai and I told her that today I met a patient who was from Mumbai and came here for a good job. I did not doubt that he might have killed somebody. He got the stitches comfortably and did not show that he was having pain. He paid through online mode for the treatment," the doctor, who treated Poonawala at Apex Hospital here, said.
The Delhi Police on Tuesday took Poonawala to the forest area of south Delhi's Chhatarpur and spent nearly three hours to locate specific places where he had allegedly dumped live-in partner Shradaha Walkar's body parts.
Poonawala allegedly strangled Walkar in May and sawed her body into 35 pieces which he kept in a 300-litre fridge for almost three weeks at his residence in South Delhi's Mehrauli before dumping them across the city over several days.