On November 14, a news spread on the internet about a man named Aftab, who killed the woman he was in love with in Delhi and cut her body into 35 pieces and kept it in a refrigerator. While many were shocked to learn about the incident, a considerable number of people went through the incident in jest. In order to understand those who have passed by, it is necessary to first understand Aftab and the society.
Brutal murderer Aftab
Shraddha, a 27-year-old woman, was in a ‘living together’ relationship with her boyfriend in Delhi a few months ago. A friend of hers said that he could not get in touch with Shraddha and that it had been several months since he spoke to her. Shraddha’s father Vikas Walkar became suspicious of the fact that her social media accounts were also not in use and lodged a missing person’s complaint with the police.
During the investigation, it was revealed that Shraddha had been brutally murdered by her boyfriend six months ago. Each of Aftab’s statements during the police investigation on ‘how he killed Shraddha’ makes our blood run cold.
Aftab and Shraddha had met in 2019 through the ‘Bumble’ dating app. Following this, Shraddha came to Mumbai and got a job in Aftab’s company. A few months later, they decided to move in together. They took up a house in Mumbai and have been living together for the past three years.
On May 14, Aftab and Shraddha came to Delhi from Mumbai and rented a house. There have been frequent fights between the two, as Shraddha has repeatedly asked Aftab to marry her and he has refused to do so.
On the night of May 18, after a fight broke out between the two, Aftab sat on Shraddha’s chest and strangled her to death.
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Aftab, who has committed a murder, is not at all disturbed. He has been searching throughout the night on Google to find out how to dispose Shraddha’s body, as he would get trapped if he buried her. After deciding to chop her body into pieces and dispose it, he slept in the same room that night, where Shraddha’s body was.
The next day, he bought a 300-litre refrigerator, black plastic bags, meat cleavers, and took Shraddha’s body to the washroom and chopped it into pieces. While chopping, he stopped in between and bought food on Zomato; ate it; and then started chopping it again. In his statement to the police, Aftab has said that it was not difficult for him to cut Shraddha’s body as he was already a cook.
He opened the tap and chopped off the body so that the noise wouldn’t be heard outside. As a result, the first 20,000 litres of water (about 35 buckets a day) that is supplied free of cost in the rented house ran out, and a further cost of Rs. 300 was charged that month.
He has chopped Shraddha’s body for two continuous days into 35 pieces in order to keep it in the refrigerator. To prevent stinking, he had cut her liver, intestines, etc., into pieces and thrown them into the forest that night itself; he then chopped out the other parts and put them in separate plastic bags and placed them inside the refrigerator. He burnt her face to prevent it from identifying and put it in the refrigerator; he even enjoyed watching it from time to time.
For 16 days in a row since then, he went for a walk at 2 a.m., and threw Shraddha’s body parts to the dogs in the surrounding town area. Moreover, he has thrown away many parts into the forest so that the animals will eat up.
During these days, food delivery workers, friends and women have come and gone to his house. But, no one knew that Shraddha’s body parts were in the house. Since it is summer, her body has started to rot quickly and started smelling. He has concealed the smell with incense sticks and room sprays. When friends came, he hid her body. Aftab has been running Shraddha’s social media accounts for a certain period of time so that no one gets suspicious.
Shraddha’s chopped body parts were in the same fridge where he kept food items like milk, vegetables and ice cream. But he has used them casually every day. He was alone in the house until he was arrested.
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Aftab met many women through the same ‘bumble’ dating app where he first saw Shraddha. He had brought another woman to the house and had sex with her while Shraddha’s disfigured body was still in the house.
But he did not feel guilty at all by any of this. When the truth was exposed and the police interrogated him, Aftab replied without any expression on his face. Police who interrogated Aftab said he slept peacefully throughout the night in the lock-up during interrogation.
Aftab confessed that he killed Shraddha because she had been asking him to marry her and said, “I had decided to kill Shraddha, a week before I killed her”.
Moreover, Aftab had hit her several times before this incident. In 2020, Shraddha had lodged a complaint with the police alleging that Aftab could kill her. A handwritten letter of hers has also been released.
Aftabs hidden inside us!
How can a man kill a woman who lived together with him in the same house for three years so brutally and remain without the slightest sense of guilt. This has shocked many. But what’s even more shocking is that many of us are able to get through it so easily.
The Shraddha murder case, which was posted on the social media pages of news organisations, was flooded with perverted comments. Comments like “You women asked for the rogue ones” were found in almost all the pages. Also, a lot of memes about Shraddha’s body in the refrigerator went viral. Many bourgeois liberal newspapers were shocked by this and reported that the human psyche has rotted.
While talking about this some college students, quickly slipped away from the news. Some expressed only the slightest sympathy for Shraddha. However, it was shocking that some people argued in favour of Aftab that “Aftab would have killed her at the heat of the moment, as he could not bear Shraddha’s torture”. In particular, it was women who spoke against Shraddha and embraced Aftab.
How are they able to accept Aftab? Aftab, who committed the brutal murder, passes by normally without any remorse. Having heard of that cruelty, the community also goes past Aftab without any hesitation. If this society is able to pass through Aftab, it means that there is an Aftab in everyone.
Aftab was not an individual. A representative of the society that is culturally deteriorating. There are many humans here who either fully or partially represent Aftab.
Recolonization destroying the human essence!
Many, who are looking for the reason for Aftab’s brutality, begin their search from him and end with him. But the question that how can a man kill the woman whom he loved and chop her body should begin from this society.
In the 1990s, India adopted the recolonizational policies of privatization-liberalization-globalization. Recolonization, viewed generally as an economic policy, also had a huge impact on politics and culture. Each and every human sense was transformed into a commodity. Especially in India, which already has a brahminical-patriarchal mindset, it is having barbaric consequences.
Aftab was a representative of humans who had been turned into barbarians by such recolonizational policies. Brought up entirely by capitalist degeneration, he used to watch a lot of web series on crime. One of them was the American crime series “Dexter”. He has confessed that Dexter instigated him to kill Shraddha. Apart from these, Aftab also had a variety of addictive habits.
Moreover, Aftab met Shraddha through a dating app. It is to be noted here that the government has not in any way banned these sex broker apps. Not only by these apps, but the society is being degraded on a daily basis in many ways like video games, pornography, etc.
Aftab, who started loving Shraddha was not expecting a marital relationship; but a ‘living together’ relationship that was not obliged to any responsibility. That is, it is a relationship that is carried out solely for fulfilling sexual desires. However, Shraddha’s demand of marrying her and conversing with other women about this is against the principles of ‘living together’.
Aftab could not tolerate Shraddha violating the ‘norms’ of a culture he loves. That is why Aftab killed her without the slightest sense of guilt.
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Aftab is not the only victim of this degenerative culture. The entire society is gradually becoming barbaric. Crimes are intensifying and becoming perverse. Rapes are evolving into gang rapes, burning and mutilation of the body. After Shraddha’s murder, there were two similar incidents of killing and chopping the body into pieces, were reported in Uttar Pradesh.
In the name of progressive, feminism, liberty, modernity, science and progress, recolonizational culture creates a society devoid of values. This means that, not only the human values gets eroded, but also the new generation is being transformed into cruel psychopaths. It creates worse qualities that don’t even exist among animals. Smartphones and the virtual world that comes with it separate humans from each other. It destroys the human nature of cohabitation.
Socialism is the only way to rescue the society and ourselves from this mess. It is only through the struggle to create that noble society, human values will be restored and recolonization shall be destroyed.
As a starting point, struggles against these sexual perversions must be carried out; public discussions should be held among the youth and students; we need to uphold the right human values against degradations such as alcohol and drugs, smartphone addiction, cinema degeneration and brahminical-patriarchal cultures. There should be protests against the media which are spreading such cultural degradation and against the State which is upholding it. The only solution is to involve ourselves in the social transformation through such struggles!
Thulipa
