A head in a blue drum, hands and legs thrown away, bloodstains in the car and house, and other gruesome details of the murder of a 49-year-old man by his son in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow have triggered painful memories of a similar murder in Meerut last year.
A 21-year-old BCom student shot dead his father, a liquor businessman and pathology lab owner, on the morning of February 20, cut the body into pieces and placed the remains in a blue drum at the family home in Lucknow’s upscale Ashiana area, police said on Monday.
The police added that the student – Akshat Singh – was arrested on Monday and confessed to the murder, HT reported earlier. Police said the murder was committed on February 20 at around 4.30 am.
The murder comes almost a year after the infamous Blue Drum case of March 2025 in which 29-year-old merchant marine officer Saurabh Rajput was murdered by his wife Muskaan Rastogi and her lover Sahil Shukla in Meerut.
Shocking details of the Lucknow case
The son often argued with his father and was planning to kill him for about a year after he read about the Meerut case on social media, according to police sources cited in the earlier HT report.
The crime arose out of an altercation after the father pressured his son to pursue India’s NEET (National Eligibility Entrance Test) pre-med exam, instead of B.com. Vikrant Veer, deputy commissioner of central police, said the latter disagreed with this view.
“His son reported Manvendra Singh missing for three days. Police arrested Akshat Singh, 21, after his conflicting statements exposed the conspiracy,” the DCP said.
After Manvendra, owner of Vardhman Pathology Lab in Kakori and also involved in liquor trade, was last seen alive, Akshat later told police that his father woke him at 6 am, claiming that he was heading to Delhi and would return in the afternoon. But with Manvendra’s three phone numbers disconnected, the family became worried, or so Akshat pretended.
The officer added that the chilling discovery was made at their three-storey residence in Ashiana Sector L, where forensic teams are now searching for evidence.
“After a heated argument with Manvendra, Akshat grabbed his father’s licensed gun and fired a bullet, killing him instantly,” a police statement said.
Investigators are examining whether the February 20 fight was a sudden escalation or the culmination of prolonged resentment, HT reported separately. Forensic teams are analyzing the bullet’s trajectory, blood spatter patterns, and the position of objects in the third-floor bedroom to determine whether the shot was fired in a moment of anger or after a calculated pause. Read the full report here
The body is cut into pieces, the sister sees the crime
The act was committed in front of Akshat’s younger sister, a class XI student. He allegedly threatened to kill her if she spoke. “The sister witnessed the entire incident but was intimidated and forced into silence,” the DCP said.
Akshay dragged the body from the third floor to an empty room on the ground floor to erase the evidence, Ashiyana Shaw Kshatrapal said. He dismembered the body there using some tools.
“To erase the evidence, Akshat dragged the body from the third floor to an empty room on the ground floor. There, he dismembered it using tools from home. He loaded some parts in his car and drove to the remote Sadrawana area, where he disposed of them,” Kshatrapal said.
The torso and head were stuffed into a blue plastic cylinder that Akshat intended to dispose of later but was caught before he could do so. Akshat dumped the other remains of the body in a remote area near Sadrona in an attempt to hide his crime and it has not yet been traced.
The DCP said he was in the process of disposing of the stump when we intervened.
On Monday evening, officers raided the house, detained Akshat and found the cylinder containing the mutilated remains. Forensic experts examine bloodstains in the car and home, while teams search our chests for missing parts.
Akshat’s attempt to clean the car aroused the suspicions of his aunt, who questioned him about the matter, but he ignored it.
When questioned by police, Akshat initially claimed that his father had committed suicide, and then confessed to the murder.
The Public Prosecutor confirmed that “rigorous interrogation led to his confession.”
Singh’s family hails from Jalun district. Manvendra’s father is a retired police officer from Uttar Pradesh. Manvendra’s wife died nine years ago.
In the Meerut case last year, the criminals cut the body into 15 pieces, placed it in a large blue drum, and sealed it with wet cement to mask the smell and delay its discovery.
