Court Verdict / Blue Drum Case: Meerut Court Hands Death Sentence to Wife, Lover

Meerut, Oct 15: In the chilling case — ‘blue drum case’ — that gripped western Uttar Pradesh for over a year, a local court in Meerut has sentenced Muskaan Rastogi and her lover Sahil Shukla to death for the brutal murder of merchant navy officer Saurabh Rajput.

The verdict, delivered by District Judge Arvind Kumar Mishra after 126 hearings and testimony from 22 witnesses, concluded that the duo conspired to kill Rajput and conceal his dismembered body inside a concrete-filled blue plastic drum.

The drum, sealed with sand and cement, became the most crucial piece of evidence in the trial. “Such crimes create fear in society at large,” Judge Mishra observed while pronouncing the sentence.

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Earlier in the day, Muskaan’s parents told the court, “Saurabh Rajput was a very good person, and if the guilty are sentenced to death, we will not protest.” Notably, her family never visited her in prison.

What Really Happened?

According to the prosecution, on March 3, 2025, Muskaan laced her husband’s food with sedatives at their Indra Nagar home. Shukla arrived soon after, and together they stabbed Rajput to death before dismembering his body in the bathroom.

To suppress the odour of decomposition, they packed the remains into a large blue drum, filled it with wet cement and sand, and sealed it.

The next day, the pair fled to Himachal Pradesh. Muskaan used Rajput’s mobile phone to send misleading text messages to his family, creating the illusion that he was alive and travelling for business.

But suspicions grew, and on March 17, relatives visited the residence with police. It was Rajput’s six-year-old daughter who reportedly told neighbours, “Papa is in the drum.”

Police cut open the sealed container to discover the remains, leading to the duo’s arrest two days later.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors presented a chain of circumstantial and technical evidence. Local shopkeepers testified to selling the drum, cement, and cleavers to the accused.

Call records placed Shukla at the crime scene and traced their movements to Shimla and Manali. Post-mortem findings confirmed Rajput had been stabbed to death.