Shraddha Walkar murder: Digital footprints most important to nail Aftab in court, say Mumbai cyber crime expert

Shraddha Walkar. File Pic

As chilling details unravel in the grisly murder of Shraddha Walkar, a Mumbai-based cyber crime investigator believes that the digital evidence in the case could help police to understand the complete sequence of crime in a broader way.

Speaking to mid-day.com, Ritesh Bhatia, Cyber Crime Investigator said, "There are multiple angles involved in the crime and the police must look into each aspect of the incident to have a broader idea of the grisly crime. The digital evidence would be most important in Shraddha's murder to nail Aftab (Poonawala)."

While investigating a missing person complaint by Shraddha's father, the police had reportedly come across a Rs 52,000 online transaction after her death, an evidence that was enough to detain Aftab for questioning.

Bhatia said, "Today, everyone is digitally advanced, people use UPI transactions, Google. These are the digital footprints the cops need to follow carefully and it will play an important role in collecting digital evidence for prosecution."

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Aftab had met Shraddha through a dating app. He killed Shraddha, a Vasai resident in May and chopped her body into 35 pieces. He then kept her body in a 300-litre fridge at his rented house in Chhatarpur. Aftab dumped her body parts in a nearby forest over 18 days, the Delhi Police reportedly said.

It is reportedly said that, he searched on google, the ways to dispose of a body.

Bhatia added, "The cyber aspect of evidence collection should also be looked into. Using Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) such as Google my activity, search history, financial transactions, social media activities and others, a lot of crucial pieces of digital evidence that would play a very important role in the case should be retrieved by the cyber crime police which can be used for further court proceedings."