Six months after launching project Punha-Dhairya, the Mira Bhayandar-Vasai Virar (MBVV) police have scanned around 657 applications and complaints filed by women in the past one year. The scheme was launched after an alleged delay and inaction by the Tulinj police station in registering the case and withdrawal of the letter by Shraddha Walkar who was brutally murdered at the hands of her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala in May-2022.
However, the gory crime came to light in November, 2022 when Shraddha's father lodged a missing persons complaint after learning from Shraddha's friends that they were unable to contact her for nearly three months. The project envisaged checking the status of all such complaints to ensure that none of the complainants were facing any type of ordeal from their tormentors. Special teams in each of the 17 police stations were deputed by commissioner- Madhukar Pandey to scan all complaints and personally communicate with the complainants.
While 186 complaints were readdressed in the first month -January, 157, 174 and 158 complainants were contacted in February, March and April. According to the police four offences under preventive action and other relevant sections of the IPC for harassment were registered in which the complainants revealed about their ordeal faced by the accused. While the action was taken after verifications by concerned ACP’s, the commissioner has been personally monitoring and reviewing the progress of the project.
Notably, Walkar had written a complaint letter in November-2020 to the Tulinj police station but had later withdrawn it. Poonawala had strangled Shraddha Walkar to death at their Chattarpur (Delhi) house in May-2022, chopped her body into small pieces in the bathroom, kept them in a refrigerator and started dumping the parts across Delhi. The gory murder case had grabbed global headlines.
