A 26-year-old woman and a man she was in a relationship with were arrested in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut on Tuesday evening for allegedly murdering her husband by chopping his body into several parts and dumping the pieces into a tank filled with liquid cement.
The police identified the deceased as Saurabh Rajput, 29, and the accused as Muskaan, his wife, and Sahil Shukla, 26.
According to the police, Muskaan and Shukla murdered Saurabh at his rented house in the Brahmpuri locality on the night of March 4. The accused allegedly dismembered Saurabh’s body and dumped around 15 body parts in a tank of liquid cement, believing this would minimise the smell of rotting flesh, the police said. While Muskaan purchased the tank and kept it at her house, Shukla brought the cement with him on the night of the murder, the police alleged.
Following the murder, Muskaan allegedly locked her rented house on March 5, dropped her five-year-old daughter off at her mother’s house nearby, and travelled to Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh with Shukla.
According to the police, during this trip, Muskaan took photographs and posted them on her husband’s Instagram account so that no one would suspect something was amiss. “Though she posted solo photographs, their family members believed she was visiting the mountains with her husband,” Ayush Vikram Singh, Superintendent of Police (SP), Meerut city, said.
On Monday evening, Muskaan and Shukla returned to their respective houses in Meerut, the police said. When Muskaan’s mother Kavita Rastogi asked Muskaan about her husband’s whereabouts, she allegedly confessed to murdering him. Kavita then went to the Brahmpuri police station along with Muskaan on Tuesday where the latter allegedly confessed to the crime.
According to the police, on the night of March 4, Muskaan laced Saurabh’s food with intoxicants, following which he fell unconscious. The accused then allegedly murdered him.
“They will be sent to jail after being produced in a local court. Her mother has agreed to take custody of her granddaughter,” SP Singh said on Wednesday.
Saurabh’s elder brother Rahul lodged an FIR at the Brahmpuri police station late Tuesday evening. “My brother and Muskaan had a love marriage in 2016. He was with the Merchant Navy at the time but quit in 2019 after which he was employed as a sales manager at a mall in London,” Rahul told the media, adding that Saurabh had come to Meerut from London on February 24 to celebrate his daughter’s birthday on February 28.
Saurabh’s family members claimed he was aware that his wife and Shukla were in a relationship. “She wanted a divorce but my son refused because he did not want to break his family while his daughter was so young. They had been fighting frequently on the issue but no one thought that they would go to such an extent,” Saurabh’s mother Renu told reporters in Meerut on Wednesday.
