Shraddha murder and its link to the American drama series Dexter

New Delhi, Nov 15: The popular American drama crime series Dexter is in the news following the gory murder of Shraddha Walker. Her live-in partners Aftab Amin had killed her in Delhi and chopped her body into 35 pieces before disposing them at different locations.

During the interrogation he told the police that he was inputted by the show to hack and discard his partner's body. Aftab had in May murdered Shraddha. The accused told the police that he wanted to silence her, but ended up strangulating her. He then hacked her body and kept the parts in small poly bags which is allegedly inspired by the show's main character Dexter Morgan played by Michael C Hall who has homicidal tendencies.

Modus operandi:

In the show, Dexter who is a forensic technician works at the fictional Miami Metro Police Department. Dexter solves crimes in the morning and leads a discrete parallel life of a serial killing. He hunts down and kills murderers who the justice system has not punished adequately.

His modus operandi in Season 1 involves cutting his victims' bodies and placing the dismembered parts inside black garbage bags. He then carries these bags in his vehicle and loads them onto his boat. Dexter then adds rocks to weight down the bags and seals them with duct tape and later dump them in an oceanic trench.

Aftab told the police that he had bought a new fridge to store the body parts of Shraddha. He had made multiple trips to the Mehrauli forest area over the next two to three months and emptied bags full of dismembered body parts. He had removed the intestines first so that they could decompose easily.

Dexter and past murders

In April 2011, Mark Andrew Twitchell, a Canadian filmmaker was convicted for first degree murder of a 38 year old man. He lured the victim into a garage, bludgeoned him and cut him apart. After burning the body parts partially, he dumped them into bags and disposed them into a storm sewer.

During the trial the court noted Twitchell's character with Dexter Morgan which promoted many in the media to term him as the Dexter Killer.

In 2014, an American teenage boy who was obsessed with Dexter was jailed for 25 years for murdering and dismembering his 17 year old girlfriend. In 2011, in Norway Shamrez Khan, 28 cited Havad Nyfloat to kill a Norwegian Pakistani woman Daiza Ashraf. Nyflot said that after being inspired by Dexter, he wanted to kill Khan in front of Faiza to stop evil.

What studies said:

In 2013, studies published in the Pediatrics journal linked violent television shows to excessive aggression and later anti-social behaviour in children.

In 2021 a research paper said that excessive exposure to media violence makes youth less emotional and desensitised towards real-life violence. This leads to aggressive behaviour and negative long-term affects on the brain, the study also said.