The brutal murder of a Merchant Navy officer in Meerut, whose body was chopped up and dumped in a drum, was planned by his wife, who convinced her boyfriend that his dead mother was speaking to him - through Snapchat - from the grave, media reports quoting the police said on Wednesday.

Merchant Navy officer Saurabh Rajput was killed by his wife, Muskaan Rastogi, and Sahil Shukla, with whom she was having an extramarital affair, on March 4.

The wife had been planning her husband's murder since November, officials told the media.

She had purchased two knives in the pretext of cutting chicken days before her husband's return.

She had also pretended to have anxiety so she could visit a doctor and access the pills she would need to put him to sleep before killing him.

Rajput's body was chopped into 15 pieces and dumped in a drum, which was sealed with cement.

Muskan and her boyfriend then tried to figure out a way to dispose of it without arousing suspicion.

Her family has said that both Muskan and Sahil did drugs regularly and one of the possible reasons that they killed Saurabh was that he would "stop their drug sessions".

Sahil's dependence on drugs also made him susceptible to one of Muskaan's sinister plans in the lead-up to the murder.

She made an account on the social media messaging app Snapchat and managed to convince her lover that her dead mother was using it to speak to him.

"The account was not in the name of Sahil's mother but the messages were sent by Muskaan in a way that she made him believe that his dead mother had reincarnated and was speaking to him.

"She used this as a means of controlling Sahil and, later, convincing him to kill her husband, Saurabh. The entire plotting was done by Muskaan, who hatched the murder plan in November," NDTV reported quoting Superintendent of Police (Meerut City) Ayush Vikram Singh.