India: Man murdered, chopped and sealed in cement drum by wife and lover

Dubai: A chilling crime has emerged from Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, where a Merchant Navy officer, Saurabh Rajput, was murdered by his wife, Muskaan Rastogi, and her lover, Sahil Shukla.

The couple’s extramarital affair led to the gruesome killing, with Saurabh’s dismembered body sealed in a drum with cement, according to an NDTV report.

Saurabh and Muskaan had a love marriage in 2016, but tensions arose after he quit his Merchant Navy job to spend more time with her.

The couple faced constant friction, leading them to move into a rented house.

In 2019, they had a daughter, but Saurabh later discovered Muskaan’s affair with his friend, Sahil.

Despite the revelation, Saurabh decided to stay for their daughter’s sake and returned to his job in the Merchant Navy in 2023.

On February 24, Saurabh returned home to celebrate his daughter’s sixth birthday. However, by March 4, Muskaan and Sahil had planned his murder.

Muskaan drugged Saurabh’s food with sleeping pills, and once he fell asleep, she and Sahil killed him with a knife.

They chopped up the body and sealed the pieces in a drum with wet cement, intending to dispose of it without detection.

To cover their tracks, Muskaan told people that Saurabh had gone to a hill station.

She and Sahil travelled to Manali with Saurabh’s phone, uploading photos on his social media to mislead others. But when Saurabh failed to answer calls from his family, they filed a police report.

Upon investigation, Muskaan and Sahil confessed to the murder. The police recovered the drum containing the dismembered body, though breaking through the cement proved challenging.

After 14 days, a drill machine was used to retrieve Saurabh’s remains.

Meerut City Police Chief Ayush Vikram Singh confirmed the incident, stating, “The murder was confessed during questioning. The body has been recovered and sent for autopsy. Both Muskaan and Sahil are in custody and will be presented in court.”

‘He loved blindly, our daughter was problem’

The parents of Muskaan Rastogi want her to be hanged till death and stress that they are firmly with Saurabh’s family in their fight for justice.

NDTV spoke to Muskaan’s parents Pramod Kumar Rastogi and Kavita Rastogi at their Meerut home and the couple made no attempts to defend their daughter. On the contrary, they said she must receive the harshest punishment for doing this to Saurabh, who loved her “blindly”.

‘We got her arrested'

Muskaan came to meet her parents yesterday after returning from the hills. “She confessed that she had killed Saurabh and we immediately took her to the police station. She told us, ‘Mummy, we killed Saurabh’,” said Muskaan’s mother Kavita Rastogi. She said Saurabh was “blindly in love” with Muskaan. “Our daughter was the problem. She got him separated from his family. And she has now done this.”

The Rastogis said they are firmly with Saurabh’s family. “That’s why we got her arrested. They should get justice. He (Saurabh) put everything at stake, left his parents, their property worth crores. And she got him (killed). He was our son too,” she said.

Asked what punishment they want for their daughter, the couple replied, with teary eyes, “She should be hanged. She has lost the right to live.”

Muskaan and Sahil were into drugs and killed Saurabh because he would have stopped their meet-ups, her parents said. Asked what could be the motive behind killing Saurabh, her father replied, “She told us that her friend (Sahil) feared that Saurabh would stop their drug sessions.”