Meerut Court Sentences Muskan Rastogi and Partner Sahil Shukla to Death in Blue Drum Murder Case
A local court in Uttar Pradesh has awarded the death penalty to a woman and her partner for the brutal killing of her husband. The sensational crime, which sent shockwaves across the country, involved murdering a former merchant navy officer, cutting his body into pieces, and sealing his remains inside a plastic container filled with wet cement. Handing down the ultimate legal punishment, the judge observed that the cold and calculated nature of the crime made it fall directly into the category of the rarest of rare cases.
The victim, thirty-five-year-old Saurabh Rajput, had returned home to Meerut after completing an assignment with the merchant navy abroad. While he was away working on cargo ships, his wife Muskan Rastogi had entered into an extramarital relationship with her companion, Sahil Shukla. When Rajput returned home to live with his family, the two partners decided to eliminate him so they could continue their relationship without interference.
The sentencing took place on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, inside the Meerut District and Sessions Court. District Judge Arvind Kumar Mishra delivered the capital verdict after finding both twenty-six-year-old Muskan and twenty-eight-year-old Sahil guilty of murder and destroying criminal evidence. Both convicts listened to the final punishment over a live video link from the Chaudhary Charan Singh District Jail, where they have been held behind bars since their arrest.
According to police investigation files, the planned murder was carried out on March 3, 2025, inside the couple’s rented home in the Brahmpuri neighborhood of Meerut. After drugging and stabbing Rajput to death, the duo chopped his body into multiple parts to make the corpse easy to hide. They placed the dismembered body parts inside a large blue plastic drum, poured bags of wet building cement over the remains to stop foul smells from spreading, and left the sealed drum inside the house.
To mislead relatives and avoid immediate suspicion, the pair took the victim's mobile phone and sent text messages to family members, pretending that Rajput was busy or traveling away on personal business. Believing their gruesome secret was safely sealed away, the two packed their bags and fled to the northern hill stations of Himachal Pradesh to spend a vacation together.
The cover-up fell apart when Rajput's parents became suspicious after their son repeatedly failed to answer their phone calls. His family approached the local police station and filed a formal missing person complaint. Investigating officers tracked digital phone tower locations, checked highway security camera footage, and visited the rented home, where they noticed the heavy, freshly sealed blue drum. On March 17, 2025, forensic officers cut open the hardened cement and discovered Rajput’s remains, leading to the immediate arrest of the couple the following day.
The trial moved forward on a fast-track schedule over nineteen months, involving 126 court hearings. The public prosecution presented twenty-two key witnesses, alongside a massive one-thousand-page charge sheet packed with forensic DNA reports, store receipts for the purchased drum and cement, and clear digital trail records showing the movements of the accused. The mountain of scientific evidence proved beyond any doubt that the two planned and executed the crime together.
Family members of the victim and local lawyers welcomed the court decision, stating that justice had finally been served for a cruel and unprovoked murder. The court concluded that such extreme cruelty against a trusting spouse showed no possibility of personal reform, leaving the judicial system with no option but to order capital punishment.