AAP MLA Naresh Balyan in a tweet insinuated that the murderer of a Hindu girl, Shraddha Walkar, Aftab Poonawala, might be related to BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala.

The remark came amid an ongoing police investigation into the gruesome case.

He tweeted, “What is the relationship between Aftab Poonawala, who murdered Shraddha Walker and cut her body into 35 pieces and BJP leader Shehzad Poonawala. People on social media are raising their voices. People want to know if there is no relation, then why is Shahzad Poonawala running away? He should come clean in the media” (translated from Hindi).

Reacting to the tweet, Shehzad Poonawala initiated criminal and civil proceedings against Naresh Balyan for his statements. He said that he would be taking further legal actions against anyone amplifying them.

As per the notice issued by Shahzad’s legal counsel, Balyan's tweet is 'scandalous and malicious which cannot be justified by a stretch of logic or reasoning as it is totally false and completely baseless. The aforesaid libel would considerably create doubt in the mind of the people'.

It added that Balyan and his party, AAP, would gain disadvantageously for the said tweet targeting Shahzad’s personal integrity and that he issued the tweet deliberately and with the intention to defame him.

In the notice, Shahzad’s counsel wrote that he is ready to submit to a live lie detector test before the public at large, to show that he is not related to Aftab Poonawala. However, Arvind Kejriwal should come forward and subject himself to the lie detector test along with his minister Satyendra Jain and Kailash Gahlot to refute the charges made by Sukesh Chandrashekhar about their involvement in the commission of various crimes.

The AAP MLA’s statement politicising the grave crime, once again, reminds one of the dangerous politics the party is known to practice.

It also reveals the hypocrisy within the AAP, considering the silence it has maintained when the names of party leaders have come up in instigating rioting, murders, and other heinous crimes. One case in point is AAP ex-councillor, Tahir Hussain, accused of the killing of Ankit Sharma, an IB officer, during the North-east Delhi riots in 2020.

aftab poonawala

Get Swarajya in your inbox.