Saket Court Rules on Overseas Video Testimony in Shraddha Walkar Murder Case

A Delhi court in Saket has ruled on how pending applications to record digital evidence from overseas witnesses must be handled under new video conferencing rules in the trial of Aaftab Poonawala, who is accused of murdering his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar in Mehrauli, South Delhi.

On June 1, Additional Sessions Judge Hargurvarinder Singh Jaggi dismissed applications filed by the prosecution seeking to record testimonies of nodal officers from Google, Bumble, Gmail, WhatsApp, and Hopper based in the US, UK, and Northern Ireland via video conferencing.

However, the court granted the state the liberty to move appropriate applications afresh under the newly enacted Electronic Evidence and Video Conferencing (EE-VC) Rules, 2025, which came into effect on July 7, 2025.

The applications to record the testimonies had been pending for over a year. According to the police, these overseas officials hold vital digital evidence related to the murder case.

Special Public Prosecutor Madhukar Pandey argued that summoning all five nodal officers to appear physically to record their statements would cause immense delay in concluding the trial. He pointed out the practical difficulties of securing international witnesses.

Defence counsel Akshay Bhandari argued that under the previous Video Conferencing Rules of 2021, the consent of the accused was mandatory before a court could use its discretion to examine an overseas witness via video conference in a criminal case.

In his ruling, Judge Jaggi highlighted a 'tectonic shift' between the 2021 and 2025 guidelines. He noted that the explicit requirement for the consent of the accused has been removed in the EE-VC Rules, 2025.

The court noted that the state had filed two applications prior to the publication of the 2025 rules, and a third application on July 10, 2025, by which time the 2021 rules had already been repealed.

According to the 6,629-page chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police, Walkar was allegedly strangled to death by Poonawala on May 18, 2022, in the Mehrauli area of South Delhi. Poonawala allegedly chopped her body into multiple pieces. The case came to light months later when Walkar's father lodged a missing person's report, which led to Poonawala's arrest in November 2022.