The blue drum has become the chilling symbol of two murder cases separated by nearly seven years. Last week, a Meerut court sentenced Muskan Rastogi and her lover Sahil Shukla to death for killing Muskan’s husband, hiding his body in a blue plastic drum and attempting to dispose of it.
Ravindra Kumar Singh, who handled the case as SHO Saadh in 2021, said police teams travelled to several states, but Chandni appears to have planned the crime meticulously and covered their tracks well.
Several investigating officers have handled the case since then, but Chandni has not been arrested.
Kanpur case predates Meerut murder, but priority remains unclear
His body was pushed headfirst into a 100-litre plastic drum, with the legs protruding, and left inside the locked room. It was discovered nearly 20 days later, when a foul smell prompted the landlord, Zakir Hussain, to alert the police . Chandni had been living in a rented room in Zakir’s house in Saadh since around September 2018.
The Kanpur case appears to predate the Meerut murder as an instance of a body being concealed in a blue drum, although available records do not establish whether it was the first such case. What links the two is the contrast between the death sentence handed down in Meerut and the long wait for justice in Wasim’s case. Wasim was allegedly hacked to death by Chandni. A bloodstained cleaver was recovered from the room. Wasim worked in Surat and would return to Kanpur from time to time to stay with Chandni. He also had a family in Jajmau, where his wife and two children lived.
