A wedding in Uttar Pradesh's Hamirpur has become the talk of the internet after a group of guests from the groom's side gifted them a large blue plastic drum - in a stark reminder of the Meerut murder case in which a woman chopped her husband's body into pieces and hid those in a similar drum.
The presentation occurred soon after the jaimala ceremony when the couple was greeting the guests. Among the well-wishers were the groom's friends who arrived with the bulky blue drum. The groom looked visibly puzzled, while the bride laughed at the gift.
Not everyone found it funny, though. It reminded people of the Meerut incident.
The video was posted to X with the caption, "What could be a worse joke than this! It is absolutely not appropriate to remember a heinous murder as a joke on a happy occasion like a wedding."
A user commented, "The world has become mentally ill, people have made fun of this massacre in every street, when it happens to oneself, then one realises that it is one's own."
"With friends like these, no one needs enemies," a comment read.
Someone wrote, "There is no dearth of idiots, they are provoking the bride."
The Meerut Cement Murder Case
On March 4, Saurabh Rajput, a 32-year-old former Merchant Navy officer, was allegedly killed by his wife Muskaan Rastogi and her lover Sahil Shukla. According to the police investigation, Muskaan first drugged her husband's food. Then she and Sahil brutally attacked him with a butcher's knife, stabbing him in the heart multiple times and slitting his throat.
The two then chopped his body into 15 pieces and hid them in a blue drum. They sealed it with cement to prevent the odour from escaping. The murder remained undiscovered until March 18, when Saurabh's six-year-old daughter told her grandmother, "Papa is in the drum."
Postmortem reports revealed that Saurabh was beheaded, both hands were cut off at the wrists, and his legs were forcibly bent to fit inside the container. Medical examiners concluded that Saurabh died of shock and excessive bleeding.
"It was put in the drum and then filled with dust and cement. The body solidified in the cement and did not rot due to a lack of air. The smell was not extremely foul," a doctor involved in the postmortem said.
After committing the crime, Muskaan and Sahil travelled to Manali to celebrate Holi. They continued to mislead Saurabh's family by texting them from his phone. Both accused are currently in judicial custody at the Chaudhary Charan Singh District Jail in Meerut.
Reports suggest Muskaan has tested positive for pregnancy while in custody.
