Meerut, September 30, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
A Meerut court on Wednesday convicted Muskan Rastogi and her lover Sahil Shukla in the murder of Rastogi’s husband, Saurabh Rajput, in the case popularly known as the Blue Drum murder case.
The court held both accused guilty of murdering Saurabh and concealing his body. The date for pronouncement of the sentence has not yet been fixed.
Prosecutor Vijay Bahadur said the prosecution had examined 22 witnesses and built its case on a sequence of circumstantial, technical and physical evidence.
“The court found both the accused, Muskan and Sahil, guilty of murder and hiding Saurabh’s body,” Bahadur said, adding that the testimonies presented by the prosecution corroborated its case.
The prosecution said local shopkeepers testified about selling a blue plastic drum, cement bags, sand, cleavers and razors to the accused before the murder. Call detail records and mobile tower locations were also presented to place Shukla at the residence around the time of the crime and trace the movements of the two to hotels in Shimla and Manali.
Post-mortem findings established that Saurabh had died of stab injuries.
Bahadur said the prosecution would seek the death penalty for both convicts. “Generally, in cases like these, the minimum punishment is a life sentence, and the maximum punishment is death,” he said.
According to the police investigation, on March 3, 2025, Muskan allegedly sedated Saurabh by mixing something into his food at their home. Shukla allegedly arrived soon afterwards, following which the two stabbed Saurabh to death and dismembered his body in the bathroom.
The investigation further alleged that the body parts were placed inside a large blue plastic drum, which was filled with a freshly mixed compound of sand, water and cement and sealed to conceal the remains and suppress the odour of decomposition.
The case was brought before the court on March 17, 2025, and Muskan and Shukla were sent to Meerut jail two days later. The trial was transferred to the district judge’s court in July 2025.
The proceedings continued for around 13 months and involved 126 hearings, with both the prosecution and defence presenting their arguments before District Judge Arvind Kumar Mishra.
Earlier, Saurabh’s elder brother Rahul had told IANS that the family wanted the accused to receive punishment proportionate to what they had allegedly done to Saurabh.
The court’s conviction comes ahead of the separate sentencing hearing, which will determine the punishment for the two convicts.
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