DNA from recovered bones match with Shraddha Walkar's father

NEW DELHI: The DNA samples extracted from some bones recovered from the forests of Mehrauli and Gurugram have matched with Shraddha Walkar's father, sources said on Thursday.

The senior officers, probing the heinous murder case of Sharddha Walkar by her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala, believe that the findings will be crucial to the investigation.

So far, the investigators had not been able to ascertain if the fragments of bones and blood samples collected from Aftab Poonawala's Chhattarpur residence in south Delhi belong to Walkar. But, now the sources have informed that the CSFL report has revealed them to be Shraddha's bones.

The Delhi Police will address the matter before the media soon. Poonawala, who has been arrested based on his confession of killing Walkar, his live-in partner and chopping her body into 35 pieces to dispose of it, was arrested last month and is currently lodged in Tihar jail.

On December 9, he was produced before a court via video conferencing and his judicial custody was further extended by 14 days. "The forensics reports will be out soon. It will help us ascertain if it was Walkar whose bones we have collected or someone else.

The DNA extracted from bones and blood samples need to be matched with Walker's father's and brother's samples. Reports on murder weapons are also awaited and we will soon have a breakthrough," an investigator privy to the probe had said on December 10.

Police are also gathering evidence based on the findings of psycho-analysis tests, lie-detector and narco-analysis tests that were conducted on Poonawala. "Based on his disclosures we are corroborating scientific evidence with a statement he gave to us. It will be instrumental to the case as his statement alone might not be admissible in court.

Multiple teams are in process of collecting evidence that will eventually help us in filing a watertight chargesheet to take this case to conviction," the officer added.