Saurabh Rajput, a Meerut-based former Merchant Navy officer was murdered on March 4 by his wife Muskaan Rastogi and her lover Suhail Shukla. Saurabh Rajput had quit his job and returned to India to spend some quality time with his wife and daughter. He wanted to resolve marital issues with Muskaan and start afresh. Sadly, his wife had other plans.
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It is suspected that both Suhail and Muskaan used drugs. It was the 27-year-old woman who plotted to kill Rajput on his return to ensure that she will get to live her life with Suhail. Meanwhile, her lover reportedly hated that Rajput could stop them from using drugs together. The Meerut Police believe that Suhail had no role in planning the murder and was lured by his lover to join the crime. Using a fake Snapchat profile, Muskaan convinced Suhail that his late mother wanted him to kill Rajput. Substance use had made Suhail the owner of a vulnerable mind and he fell for it, the cops believe.
After successive failed attempts, Suhail and Muskaan finally managed to drug Saurabh Rajput and stab him to death. They reportedly cut his body into 15 parts and sealed it in a drum using cement. Although she tried to mislead the victim's kin by sending messages from his phone, it didn't workout as the family grew suspicious of him not answering the calls.
When the UP Police brought in the lovers for interrogation over suspicion of foul play in Rajput's missing, the horrible crime was finally revealed.
How did Muskaan and Suhail meet?
According to the probe team, Suhail and Muskaan were schoolmates. They reconnected via WhatsApp in 2019 when an alumni group was formed, Times Of India (TOI) said in a report. After she fell in love with the man who was two years younger than her, Muskaan considered Saurabh Rajput a hurdle that needed to be eliminated.
Muskaan and Saurabh tied the knot in 2016. The love marriage was against the wish of his family and the scars never fully healed even years after the union. Thus, they lived in a rented accommodation ever since marriage. However, cracks began to develop between them over the years and this led to Muskaan starting her affair with Suhail.
Muskaan believed she could exploit this gap between her husband and his family to believe the latter that he left for London after a brief vacation in the hills to never return. She even used Saurbah's mobile phone to text them in an attempt to convince them that he was on a trip. However, Saurabh still visited his parents and spoke with them although not very attached to them. Thus, his not answering the calls made them suspicious, forcing them to reach the cops.
Before executing her plan, Muskaan sent her six-year-old daughter away to stay at her grandmother’s, the TOI report said. The accused went on a trip to Himachal Pradesh to evade suspicion. However, they were ultimately caught when Saurabh’s family lodged a missing person complaint with the Meerut Police.
