Meerut:
The wife, Muskaan Rastogi, and her lover, Sahil Shukla, have been given the death sentence by a local court in Meerut for the murder of a merchant navy officer, Saurabh Rajput, last year. Muskaan and Sahil were convicted two weeks ago, with the sentence pronounced on Wednesday. A concrete-filled blue plastic drum became the motif and the most crucial evidence of the murder case.
After 126 hearings and 22 witness statements, District Judge Arvind Kumar Mishra ruled that Rastogi and Shukla conspired to kill Saurabh Rajput and concealed his dismembered body inside a blue industrial drum using concrete and sand. The judge had commented that such crimes create fear in society at large. In the morning, Muskaan Rastogi's parents told the court that Saurabh Rajput was a "very good person", and if the guilty are sentenced to death, "we will not protest". Muskaan Rastogi's family never met her in prison.
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 murderer duo had 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.
Saurabh and Muskaan's six-year-old daughter had reportedly told neighbours, "Papa is in the drum."
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.