India, Oct. 20 -- 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.

In Kanpur, a strikingly similar case dates back to December 2019, when Wasim Ahmad, 32, was allegedly murdered and his body stuffed into a drum in a locked rented room in Saadh, Ghatampur. The accused, Chandni, a transgender person who was in a relationship with Wasim, remains at large.

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...