New Delhi: Argument over NEET, Meerut case ‘inspiration’: Inside Lucknow blue drum murder of father by son
A 21-year-old man in Lucknow allegedly killed his father, dismembered his body and stuffed it in a blue drum on Friday, February 20, reportedly following an argument over the father asking his son to pursue medical entrance exam NEET, said police.
The accused, identified as Akshat is a B.com student and disagreed with his father’s will for him to pursue NEET and the gruesome crime stemmed from an argument over the same, said Vikrant Vir, deputy commissioner of police, Central in Lucknow, Hindustan Times reported earlier.
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According to police, the gruesome murder in Lucknow was inspired by the ‘blue drum’ murder case in Meerut which happened in March 2025. In the Meerut murder case, Muskan Rastogi and her lover Sahil Shukla killed the woman’s husband Saurabh Rajput, who was a 29-year-old Merchant Navy officer, and chopped his body into 15 pieces before stuffing in a large blue drum. Th drum was then sealed with cement to mask the odour and delay discover of the crime and the body.
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The Lucknow Police sources told Hindustan Times that the man had read about the Meerut blue drum case on social media and had been planning to kill his father, identified as Manvendra, for around a year over repeated arguments.
The crime unfolded in the accused’s three-storey family home in Lucknow’s upscale Ashiana area.
The accused used his father’s licensed rifle to carry out the crime. According to a police statement, Akshat grabbed his father’s rifle after a heated argument and fired a shot at him, killing him on the spot.
Akshat killed his father in front of his sister, a class 11 student, and even allegedly threatened to kill her if she spoke about what had happened. “The sister witnessed the entire episode but was intimidated into silence,” the DCP said.
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The police said that murder took place on the morning of February 20 at around 4.30am where the forensic teams are looking for evidence now.
The accused’s father, who owned a pathology lab and was also involved in liquor trade, was last seen alive on the morning of February 20, the day of crime. In a bid to mislead police, Akshat told them that his father had woken him up at 6 am and told him that he was leaving for Delhi and would be back by afternoon. However, the family grew anxious after all three of Manvendra’s phone numbers were switched off.
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