Aaftab Poonawala, who is accused of killing his girlfriend Shraddha Walkar in May and is currently in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, has refused to meet his relatives, jail officials said.
They said that although the 28-year-old has been imprisoned in Tihar since November 26, he has not yet submitted to the prison administration the names of family or friends who can visit him in prison.
According to the prison manual, every prisoner is allowed to meet with his relatives or friends twice a week in the prison interview room.
Before a prisoner is allowed to meet with anyone outside, the prison warden takes the names of family members and friends, checks them, and then gives written permission for visitors to come to the prison twice a week.
In addition, all prisoners – except those booked for heinous crimes, except those under the provisions of the law for the prevention of illegal activities or the provisions of the UAPA – are allowed to use the prison telephone for five minutes twice a day. For this, the prisoner will have to share his contact number and sign an affidavit.
Jail officials said that while Poonawala generally keeps to herself, she has reportedly told her cellmates that she hopes to meet someone later this week.
Sure enough, he hasn’t sent anyone’s names to the prison warden yet.
“We have lodged Poonawala with two inmates in a cell where there is 24-hour CCTV footage. The fellow inmates accused of theft are also ensuring that he will not be harmed or attacked by any other inmate. Our agents who see him in the pictures saw that he hardly talks to his peers. He spends time reading in his cell. Our supervisor informed him about the rules of visits and the use of the telephone. But he said he doesn’t want to meet or talk to anyone,” said a jail official on condition of anonymity.
Poonawala allegedly killed 27-year-old Walkar on May 18 at the accommodation they rented in south Delhi’s Chhattarpur Pahadi. According to police, he cut her body into 35 pieces and dumped them in forested areas in and around south Delhi, a tactic that helped him evade capture until his arrest on November 12.
Jail officials said they were shocked by Poonawala’s behavior as he does not even talk to his family on the phone, and his lawyer withdrew the bail application filed in a city court last week.
“He only talks to his adviser. Either he has resigned to his fate, or he may have planned his next move,” said the officer.
As of Tuesday, Poonawala had made only one request to the prison authorities: she asked the warden if she could have access to English books or novels, and was given American author Paul Theroux’s travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar.
