As grim details of the Shraddha Walkar murder case emerged, Business Today spoke to an expert to understand the psyche of the accused Aaftab Poonawalla who allegedly carried out the gruesome murder. Poonawala is accused of murdering Walkar and chopping her body into pieces before throwing it away in a forest.
Kritika Saxena, Lead-Psychological Services and Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Gurugram’s Sukoon Health is of the opinion that if all allegations against Poonawala are true, he can be categorised as a psychopath.
Saxena explains, “The conversations about and around this case allege Poonawala to be what a layperson calls, a psychopath.” She further says that a ‘psychopath’ in the medical sense suffers from what’s called the ‘antisocial personality disorder’.
“What we mean is that the individual might seem like a person next door from the outside, going about his regular life but what goes on the inside is a disregard for rules and regulations of society and law and lack of remorse or guilt for any acts of destruction, vandalism or crime,” she says.
Saxena’s description of a psychopath to a large extent matches with the claims against Poonawala. Few of Poonawala’s neighbours in the Mehrauli apartment have said they had little clue about the crime until the police came and started the investigation. Poonawala, on the outside, looked like he was living a perfectly fine life often making posts on Instagram, where he even had a following of over 29,000.
Poonawala‘s demeanour is not surprising, strictly going by the definition of a psychopath, according to Saxena. She says an individual can appear normal on the outside but lack all emotional attachment on the inside.
“The individual may appear quite in tune with their social or interpersonal setting, however on the inside they might not have any emotional attachment and have over the period of time learnt how to mimic emotional responsiveness,” she says.
This failure to read a person can be attributed to the vastness of the human psyche. “The human psyche is so vast that we are still exploring and deciphering thought processes, feelings, and behaviours of humans,” Saxena says.
Intriguingly, the post-murder activity of Poonawala defied any irregularity in behaviour. Business Today asked Saxena how do you place the allegations that he brought other women home while parts of his dead partner lay in the fridge.
She explained: “One might say that Poonawalla was trying to go about his life as if nothing had happened so as to try to convince his mind that all is fine. We as humans often try to fool our minds into thinking and believing what we want to. So, to run away from any unaddressed or unresolved feelings around the act, one might portray that life is in balance and we can keep moving forward.”
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