‘Won’t fight verdict, but my daughter was a victim too’: Mother who exposed ‘blue drum’ murder | Meerut News
MEERUT: She was the mother who told police about her own daughter’s involvement in a murder. Now, after a Meerut court sentenced Muskan Rastogi and her lover to death for killing and dismembering her husband, Kavita Rastogi, 45, said she would not challenge the verdict. But she believed there was another side to her daughter’s story, one that had begun years before the murder. “Everyone links this horrifying crime to my daughter, but few speak of Sahil, the real monster. Won’t fight verdict. But my child went through dark times, was a victim of circumstances too. The story that no one knows.”In the narrow bylanes of Brahmpuri, Meerut, where Muskan grew up, the family had become associated with the March 2025 murder of merchant navy officer Saurabh Rajput, whose dismembered body was concealed in a blue plastic drum filled with cement. “She disgraced this locality, forever. We feel cursed,” said a neighbour. At the family’s corner house, Kavita, a mother of three, agreed to speak to TOI and remembered Muskan as a quiet girl who had been close to her family before she married Saurabh against her parents’ wishes.“Sahil was her classmate. There was no romance between them. She loved Saurabh. The day she turned 18, she left home and married him in 2018. We did not approve of her marriage initially for obvious reasons, but then conceded,” she said.The marriage was peaceful for the first year, Kavita recalled. But Saurabh’s work kept him away for long periods, and the couple lived in rented accommodation without support from his family, which she said had disowned him. Muskan reconnected with her former classmate Sahil Shukla in 2019. By 2021, their association had begun straining her marriage. “We had sensed something was not right and had gone to the rented accommodation of the couple and also suggested to Saurabh to separate and eventually take divorce but things did not work as per our suggestion,” said Muskan’s father, Pramod Rastogi, a jewellery artisan.Kavita claimed Sahil, whom she described as a drug addict with an interest in the occult, began exercising control over her daughter in 2022. “We had practically lost her by then. He had taken complete control over her. She had refused to connect with us. Now we know why. She was perhaps in a state of illusions caused by substance.” The mother said it had taken the family more than a year to understand what she believed had happened. “It took us time understand that Sahil had pushed her into drugs and eventually destroyed her,” she said.Kavita maintained that Muskan’s involvement in the murder was difficult to reconcile with the daughter she had known. “The horrifying crime that she assisted in committing, I am not prepared to believe she could have done that in her conscious senses. But who would believe me? The verdict is already out,” she said. She also blamed Saurabh for leaving Muskan alone for extended periods. “Saurabh was also at fault. He should not have left her alone,” she said.In March 2025, Muskan and Sahil killed Saurabh, dismembered his body and concealed the remains in a cement-filled drum. Kavita informed police about the crime, leading to the investigation and arrests. After more than 100 hearings and examination of 22 witnesses, the court convicted the pair on Sept 30 and sentenced them to death on Wednesday.
