Aaftab Poonawala influenced by Al Qaeda and ISIS material on capture and interrogation: Gave exactly same rehearsed answers during police custody, polygraph and narco tests

NEW DELHI: According to a senior source in the Delhi police looking into the Shraddha Walkar murder case, who requested anonymity during our interview, the accused Aftab Amin Poonawalla could have been influenced and studied Al Qaeda and ISIS or Islamic State literature and other material available online during the days preceding his arrest.

According to the police source, when the Manickpur police from the Palghar district of Maharashtra called Aftab for questioning on two occasions and let him go back home, Poonawalla realized that one day or the other he would be arrested and would have to face rigorous interrogation by the cops, including possible third-degree.

Accordingly, he began to study methods and techniques on how to manipulate the interrogation and questioning process of the police and came across various material online by the Al Qaeda and ISIS which dealt with manipulating the interrogation and not revealing correct information in spite of physical torture, electric shocks, narco tests or drug tests and the like.

The ISIS and the Al Qaeda have very comprehensive information on this and it is very possible Aftab came across this information and studied it in detail. He could also read Urdu and a little bit of Arabic, which helped him in his research, our sources said.

According to Delhi police sources,  Aftab knew he would be arrested some day. His aim was to ensure the body or at least crucial parts of the body like Shraddha’s skull and the exact weapons used for the murder were not found at all. He rehearsed the questions and answers for more than three months and that is how all the questions posed to him by the cops – during interrogation in police custody and during the polygraph and narco tests, elicited exactly the same answers from him.

ISIS and Al Qaeda operatives are trained to blurt out rehearsed or memorized answers to several sets of questions even under electric shocks or drug-induced anesthesia and torture – something similar to the narco or Truth Serum tests.

Polygraph tests are much easier to spoof as they mostly rely on physical attributes like sweating, eye movement, heart beat, muscle contraction, blood pressure, etc., says a forensic doctor familiar with the process.

Operatives are trained to control their eye movements and sweating during capture and interrogation by staying calm and relaxed mentally. They are brainwashed and told they will be rewarded in “jannat” for their act, something that Aftab also repeated to the cops during questioning, opined the forensic expert.

The ingrained or brainwashed thought that they will be welcomed and rewarded for their act, gives them a certain calmness and control over their thoughts, brain waves and other physical attributes like blood pressure and heart beat, making it difficult for the polygraph or lie-detector machine to detect any anomalies during questioning or between real questions and placebo or dummy questions.

“The human mind can be controlled by pre-programming, practice of yoga or meditation and various other mind-control methods known to man for centuries. Military regimes and military personnel undergo this training regularly, just in case they are caught by the enemy. They can resist all forms of rough torture or other psychological tests and yet divulge nothing to the other side. Similarly, a hardened criminal like Aftab Poonawalla who knew for almost six months or even two years that someday he would have to face the cops can easily manipulate the results of tests like narco analysis and the polygraph or lie-detector test,” opines Dr Pranav Kabra of the Raksha Multispeciality Hospital in suburban Mumbai, who has studied the subject in detail.

“A person like Aftab Poonwalla who was interested in macabre murders, crime, police work and murder investigation and had watched several films, web series and shows on these topics would have done a lot of research and study and programmed his mind to manipulate the results of lie-detectors or polygraph machines and narco or truth serum tests,” claims Dr Kabra.