A team of forensic experts inspecting the body parts of 27-year-old Shraddha Walkar, who was allegedly killed by her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala in Delhi, has said that the process of DNA sampling is a challenging task as the samples they have got so far are old and the analysis would take at least two weeks.
Walkar was allegedly murdered on May 18 by 28-year-old Poonawala, who later chopped her body and scattered the pieces in the Mehrauli forest. The police filed an FIR on November 10 after receiving a complaint from Walkar’s father.
According to a senior official from the Forensic Science Laboratory, Rohini, the DNA analysis is going to take two weeks as the samples are very old. “It may not be easy as the condition of the biological samples is questionable and how many life cells we will be able to find is difficult to say. We are still getting samples from the investigating team,” said the official.
Over the past three days, the police have recovered over 10 suspected body parts from the forested area, mostly in the form of bones, but said they needed to be verified through forensic analysis.
On Tuesday, the forest remained the focus of the case with the police saying that they recovered at least one “suspected body part”. In the nearly four-hour operation to recover and identify the remains, the police first accompanied Poonawala to the forest, and later Walkar’s father and brother.
According to a senior forensics doctor working with Safdarjung Hospital, DNA matching and identification of the victim is done with blood samples from parents and siblings and recovered bones can be samples for the same. “While bones recovered can be used for DNA even after years, we have to recover some bone marrow in it,” he added.
