Aaftab’s ‘confessions’ have no legal validity: Experts

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ The reported ‘confessions’, including those allegedly made before a magistrate, by Mehrauli killing accused Aaftab Amin Poonawala do not have conclusive legal validity, experts said, doubting that several key conditions were not fulfilled. Though police and other official sources have claimed that Poonawala had confessed to killing his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar and dismembering her body, his counsel has said Poonawala had denied that he had confessed.

The legal experts also questioned Poonawala’s confession before a magistrate through video conferencing and termed it objectionable and unprecedented. News reports quoting sources in the Delhi Police have claimed on multiple occasions that Poonawala had confessed to killing Walkar, cutting her body into 35 pieces and dumping them in different areas of the city.

On Wednesday, it was reported that he has confessed to his crime in a polygraph test conducted at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Rohini, to which retired Delhi High Court judge Justice RS Sondhi said narcoanalysis and polygraph test are ‘useless and a waste of time as they have no legal sanctity’. “What he did after killing the girl is merely destruction of evidence,” he said.