Meerut: It was 1 am on 4 March. Sahil, who believed his mother’s soul possessed his lover, Muskan, allegedly helped stab her husband Saurabh to death after she convinced him that it was his late mother’s wish.
The stabbing, thrice, was Saurabh’s cause of death, his autopsy report has revealed.
The Meerut district police Tuesday took lovers Muskan Rastogi and Sahil Shukla into custody after recovering Saurabh Rajput’s body from a plastic drum at the married couple’s rented flat in Brahmpuri Colony, Meerut. A local court sent the accused to 14-day judicial custody Wednesday.
Muskan allegedly confessed to the police that she created a social media account to chat with Sahil, pretending to be his mother.
“She (Muskan) kept chatting with Sahil from her Snapchat account, claiming to have his mother’s soul. She did this to ensure he followed all her wishes, passed on to him as orders from his dead mother,” an officer said.
She had three Snapchat profiles, in the names of herself, and her mother and younger brother, to chat with Sahil as different people, said the officers privy to the murder probe.
Muskan knew that Sahil believed in superstitions, reincarnation and evil spirits, so she allegedly adopted deceptive techniques—not only to talk to him as his mother but also to convince him that her parents had given the green light to their relationship.
Muskan told the police that she had a fractious marriage with Saurabh, and when she met her ex-schoolmate, Sahil, she entered an extramarital relationship with him. On finding out about them, Saurabh filed a divorce petition in 2021, but it remained pending as she never agreed to it.
Sahil also asked her to go for a divorce and marry him, but she did not listen. Instead, she meticulously planned her husband’s murder and roped in her lover to execute it.
Minutiae of conspiracy
In November 2024, Muskan went around, asking acquaintances for details on dumping grounds.
“In casual conversations, she asked where to dump a body in case of a murder and received rude responses. She junked the plan afterwards,” another police officer said.
However, the plot continued in her mind.
She later approached a local psychiatrist, complaining about symptoms of anxiety. A renowned doctor in the area prescribed her sleeping pills. She then collected more information on drugs for inducing unconsciousness. After researching on Google, she edited her prescription and added a few more drugs, which she bought to make a combination of drugs. The concoction would ensure Saurabh fell unconscious after having it.
Premeditating the murder, Muskan also purchased 10 kg of bleach powder from a quick commerce site for cleaning blood off floors. On 22 February this year, she bought the murder weapon—two knives.
On 25 February—her birthday—Muskan mixed the drugs into Saurabh’s drinks, but he never drank it. The first murder plan, therefore, failed, the police said. The presence of their child was also a bottleneck.
A short video of the Meerut couple and their daughter (6) dancing on 25 February makes them look like any typical family. However, Muskan allegedly planned to “slaughter” her husband on that day to clear the way for her union with her lover, who lived in their neighbourhood.
The plan failed once but was a success on the second try.
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‘Success’ in murder
On 3 March this year, Muskan sent her daughter, who had just completed her exams, to her maternal grandparents. In the evening, Saurabh, who did not share the best of relationships with his family members but still visited them, brought vegetable balls from their house.
Muskan mixed the sedatives in the vegetable balls and, on having those, Saurabh lost consciousness. Then, she called Sahil for the final act. When Sahil arrived, Muskan made him recall that his late mother had suggested he help in Saurabh’s murder. Sahil asked Muskan to sit on her husband and stab him with the knife she had bought. They stabbed Saurabh thrice.
“Sahil’s helping hand during the stabbing came on the advice given by Muskan disguised as his dead mother,” a police officer said, quoting the revelations made by Muskan.
Having killed Saurabh, the lovers had their task cut out in disposing of the body. But, before that, they had to deep-clean the spot with the bleach powder Muskan had bought.
By 3 am, the lovers had cut the body into four pieces—two hands, the head, and the torso. They initially planned to fit the pieces in bags but then kept them at home overnight. Muskan went to Sahil’s house for the night, just a few streets away.
On 4 March, roughly at 9 am, Muskan returned home and went out to the market to procure drums, cement, and sand, the police officer said. “She went alone, so as not to give others any clue,” a police officer said.
By 3 pm, the lovers met at Muskan’s and sealed Saurabh’s body parts into the drum with the cement and sand. Leaving the drum in the flat, they took a cab to Himachal Pradesh at roughly 6 pm. As part of the conspiracy, the cab had been booked earlier.
Having alerted her parents about going to Himachal with Saurabh, Muskan carried Saurabh’s phone to the hill station.
“She texted Saurabh’s family and friends from his WhatsApp account but never received their calls,” Meerut City Superintendent of Police (SP) Ayush Vikram Singh told ThePrint.
“She kept making excuses to prevent uncomfortable conversations on WhatsApp or even calls, with her parents and daughter during their entire trip in Himachal, free of any guilt whatsoever. They went on to Shimla, Manali and Kasol,” another police officer said.
The lovers spent nearly Rs 54,000, out of the Rs 1 lakh that Saurabh previously transferred to her account, on cab expenses. The transfer was made by Saurabh, fearing attachment of his bank account after his friend’s account was attached in a cyber fraud investigation, the police investigation has revealed.
Muskan, according to the police, hatched the murder plot as she believed no one was bothered about Saurabh, considering he was not well-connected with his family and friends. Their daughter, however, kept asking about Saurabh.
Caught in stories
The plan was near perfect. Muskan and Sahil splurged more than Rs 50,000 to have fun in Himachal Pradesh after the murder. They played Holi, and a video shows them drenched in colours. The daughter’s curiosity, however, proved their undoing on Tuesday.
Muskan and Sahil returned to Meerut on 17 March evening and stayed at Sahil’s house. On 18 March, Muskan visited her daughter at her parents’ place. Once there, she concocted a different story.
“For the first time, she concocted a different story in response to her daughter’s constant questions. She claimed that Saurabh’s family killed him due to dissatisfaction over their marriage and financial disputes over which her father (Saurabh) disagreed with his family and also sent someone to check their flat,” Meerut City SP Singh told ThePrint.
Around the same time, the police received a PCR call about a foul smell from their flat and sent a team to inspect. The team recovered Saurabh’s body from the drum.
Being the only person the neighbours had seen in the flat over the past few days, Muskan was the first person the police reached for questioning. In a round, she spilt the beans on the entire sequence of events.
Asked what prompted Muskan to carry out the murder, the police officers mentioned her confidence. She thought she would get away with claiming Saurabh had left for London.
“She said that she was confident that no one would notice the murder since no one was really bothered about him,” one of the officers said.
Marriage & affair
What began as a love story in 2016 at Muskan’s maternal grandfather’s ended in murder on 4 May. Muskan revealed to the police that her grandfather was an astrologer and, nine years ago, Saurabh was visiting his house to enquire about his prospects.
“That was their first encounter,” a police officer told ThePrint.
Muskan was told Saurabh was working abroad in the Merchant Navy. They solemnised a court marriage in 2016 and started living with his family, a couple of kilometres away in the same locality in Meerut.
According to Muskan, Saurabh was never in the Merchant Navy and was abroad for six months in three years since their marriage in 2016.
The couple had a child in early 2019, but the same year, Muskan met Sahil, who she liked from school.
“They connected through a WhatsApp group of schoolmates and, with them living in the same locality, their relationship deepened rapidly,” the police officer said.
Meanwhile, Saurabh, a Class 12-pass job aspirant, often was not in his flat as he searched for jobs. Sahil started meeting Muskan at the couple’s flat regularly—which further strengthened their relationship.
Souring relations
The youngest of the three children of Munna Lal (65) and Renu Devi (51), Saurabh did not share a close relationship with his family members, who evicted him from their house in late 2019, Muskan allegedly told the cops.
However, Saurabh’s elder brother Bablu alleged that it was she who created a toxic atmosphere in the house and abused their mother on some occasions, leading to the souring of relations.
“She removed my brother from the family and shifted to a rented flat. She had threatened to leave us longing to glimpse Saurabh, and she did that,” Saurabh’s mother, Renu Devi, told ThePrint.
Saurabh’s eviction from his house coincided with Muskan’s developing relationship with Sahil, and it continued without any hiatus till the couple’s landlord spotted a trend.
“The landlord alerted Saurabh about his wife’s possibly developing extramarital affair, and it led to a confrontation between the wife and the husband in 2020,” another police officer said.
Sahil, meanwhile, was living with his 80-year-old maternal grandmother, said Nirmila Gupta (76), whose house is opposite Sahil’s in Meerut’s Brahmpuri Colony.
Sahil lost his mother very early in childhood and his elder brothers live in London or other parts of Meerut.
In February 2023, Saurabh landed a job as a baker in London and left for the United Kingdom. From London, Saurabh had, monthly, been sending Rs 10,000 to Muskan to manage household expenses.
However, Muskan allegedly told the cops that her father, who runs a nearby jewellery business, chipped in with the expenses.
Unaware that a conspiracy was underway for his murder, Saurabh returned to see his wife and daughter on 24 February this year, only to be murdered by his wife and her lover.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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