Aftab Poonawala, the 28-year-old man accused of killing his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar, told a Delhi court on Tuesday that he committed the act in the “heat of the moment”, ANI reported.

Poonawala was arrested on November 12 after the police said that he confessed to killing Walkar and chopping her body into several pieces. He then threw the body parts at different places in Delhi over several days, the police said.

The 28-year-old was on Tuesday produced before Delhi’s Saket court through video conferencing after his five-day police custody ended. Poonawala told the court that he was co-operating with the police, but claimed having difficulty to recall how he went about the crime.

The Saket court extended Poonawala’s police custody by four days, PTI reported.

Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday rejected a petition seeking that the case be transferred from the police to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Hindustan Times reported.

Lawyer Joshina Tuli, who had filed the petition, contended that the police would not be able to investigate the case efficiently due to paucity of staff and the lack of technical and scientific equipment to gather evidence. Tuli also expressed concern about the presence of mediapersons at the crime scene.

The High Court, however, said that the petition was “nothing but a publicity interest litigation”. A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad asked how Tuli could question the police’s investigation when Walkar’s parents had not expressed any complaints about it.

At the hearing, Delhi Police counsel Sanjay Lao told the High Court that 80% of the investigation in the case was complete.