Assam Chief
Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma made the grisly murder of 26-year-old Shraddha
Walkar a part of Gujarat BJP’s poll pitch while campaigning for the party in
Kutch. Sarma, who was a long-time Congress leader before switching to the BJP,
said if there was no strong leader in the country, people like Aftab would be
born in every city.

The Assam
CM made the comment while pitching for Narendra Modi’s third term as Indian
prime minister. Raising allegations of ‘love jihad,’ Sarma stressed upon the
need of a strong leader at the helm of affairs. Love jihad, according to India’s
liberal media, is a conspiracy theory that states Muslim men woo Hindu women to
convert them. Conservative factions of the Indian media trust in love jihad.

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“Aftab
brought Shraddha behen (sister) from Mumbai and cut her up into 35 pieces in
the name of love jihad. And where did he keep the dead body? In the fridge. And
while the body was in the fridge, he brought another woman home and started
dating her,” the Assam CM said.

“If the
country doesn’t have a powerful leader, one who considers the nation their
mother, such Aftab will be born in every city, and we would not be able to
protect our society. So, it is very important that Narendra Modi be made PM
again, for the third time, in 2024,” he said.

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Shraddha
Walkar and Aftab Poonawala met through Bumble nearly three years ago. They lived
together in Mumbai and then shifted cities to Delhi in May this year. On May
18, following an altercation, Aftab is alleged to have strangled Shraddha to
death. He subsequently went on to cut his live-in partner’s dead body into pieces,
store them in a fridge and spread them around Delhi, the accusation goes.