A scant unassuming apartment in the tight lanes of Delhi’s Chhatarpur and the dense neighbouring forest of Mehrauli transformed into a stage to play out a macabre story of murder and madness. Aaftab Ameen Poonawala, a trained chef and Instagram food influencer, used his dexterity with knives on his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar’s corpse after strangling her to death, with reported inspiration from the TV show Dexter. The killing was gruesome, and the usual suspects on TV news turned it into a salacious primetime spectacle with toxic flavours of misogyny, bigotry and victim-blaming.
As cameras zoomed in on skulls, reporters scoured the forest for body parts and editors turned into forensic experts, facts, nuance, and the issue of women’s safety became a casualty. Sample the tickers: ‘fridge main ladki, bagal mein laash’, ‘mohabbat to murder’, ‘tukde tukde love story’, and ‘aashiq nahi jallad, mission love jihad’.
