New Delhi: In a country where marriage is often considered sacred, two recent murder cases – one involving a honeymoon trek in Meghalaya and another ending in a cement drum in Meerut – have shocked the nation. Recently, a Kolkata man beheaded his sister-in-law while a Bengaluru man beheaded his wife over a suspected affair.

The Honeymoon That Turned Fatal

On May 23, Raja Raghuvanshi, a young groom from Indore, set off with his new bride Sonam for a romantic honeymoon in the hills of Meghalaya. Eleven days into their marriage, he was found dead near a popular waterfall, allegedly pushed off the cliff. His bride disappeared the same day, only to resurface nearly three weeks later, over 1,200 km away, in Ghazipur.

According to the police, Sonam may have orchestrated her husband’s murder, possibly with help from hired killers and a suspected former lover, Raj Khushwaha. A red car that tailed the couple’s vehicle and her cryptic phone call just before Raja’s death is now at the centre of a deeper investigation into premeditated betrayal.

The Cement Drum of Meerut

Barely a month earlier, in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, Saurabh Rajput, a former merchant navy officer, was allegedly drugged, killed, and dismembered by his wife, Muskan Rastog, and her lover, Sahil Shukla. His body parts were stuffed into a plastic drum, which was then filled with cement to conceal the stench of decay. The duo then fled to Himachal Pradesh for a vacation, while using Saurabh’s phone to send misleading messages to his family.

Both these crimes unfolded in domestic spaces – sanctuaries of trust and love – and yet, both were coldly calculated, plotted, and executed with chilling precision.

Further investigation is underway in the Sonam Raghuvanshi case.

Meghalaya Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh said that this is clearly a case of love triangle and the main accused hired contract killers. Sonam Raghuvanshi is the main accused. Apart from this, the contract killers include Vishal Chauhan, Raj Singh, and Anand Kurmi. They are residents of Indore.

So far four people have been arrested in the Raja Raghuvanshi murder case. Sonam has been arrested from Ghazipur while Akash Rajput, Raj Kushwaha and another person have been arrested from Indore. Police have arrested another person in this case from Lalitpur in UP.