In Meerut Blue Drum Murder Case, Wife And Her Lover Convicted

Thirteen months after a concrete-filled blue plastic drum became the motif and the most crucial evidence of a murder case in Meerut, a local court on Wednesday convicted his wife, Muskan Rastogi, and her lover, Sahil Shukla. After 126 hearings and 22 witness statements, District Judge Arvind Kumar Mishra ruled that Rastogi and Shukla conspired to kill   former Merchant Navy officer Saurabh Rajput, 29, and concealed his dismembered body inside a blue industrial drum using concrete and sand. The quantum of sentence remains to be pronounced, and the prosecution intends to seek the death penalty.

The judge commented that such crimes create fear in society at large.

On March 3, 2025, Muskan Rastogi sedated her husband, Saurabh Rajput, at their Indra Nagar home by lacing his food, as per the police case. Her lover Sahil Shukla arrived shortly after, and the duo stabbed Rajput to death before dismembering his body in the bathroom, said the prosecution. Seeking to suppress the odour of decomposition, they packed the dismembered body parts into a large blue plastic drum, filled it with a freshly mixed wet compound of sand, water, and cement, and sealed it, the probe revealed.

The duo fled to Himachal Pradesh the next day, and Rastogi used Rajput's mobile phone to send text messages to his family members, creating an illusion that he was alive and travelling for business.

On March 17, 2025, suspicious relatives visited the residence alongside local authorities. Police cut open the sealed blue drum inside to discover Rajput's remains, leading to the chase and arrest of Rastogi and Shukla two days later.

The prosecution presented a chain of circumstantial, technical, and physical evidence throughout the trial. Local shopkeepers testified to selling the specific blue plastic drum, cement bags, sand, cleavers, and razors to Rastogi and Shukla before the murder. Call detail records and mobile signal tower locations placed Shukla at the residence during the time of the crime and traced the duo's joint movement to hotel stays in Shimla and Manali in Himachal. Post-mortem findings confirmed that he'd been stabbed to death.