New Delhi, Jul 02: The State of Meghalaya has approached the Supreme Court challenging the Meghalaya High Court’s order upholding the bail granted to Sonam Raghuvanshi, the prime suspect in the chilling May 2025 “honeymoon murder” of her husband, Raja Raghuvanshi.
Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta mentioned the State’s petition before a partial working days bench led by Justice MM Sundresh for urgent listing.
SG Mehta submitted that bail was granted solely on the ground that the grounds of arrest were not fully supplied to her at the time of arrest.
The SG said that the non-supply concerned a provision that was wrongly cited due to a typographical error. Saying that there was a chance of the accused absconding, the SG sought urgent listing.
Justice Sundresh agreed to list the matter tomorrow.
Raghuvanshi was granted the relief by the Addl. DC (Judicial), Shillong, primarily on the grounds that the police had failed to effectively communicate to her the grounds for her arrest, thereby causing prejudice to her defence.
Essentially, the Court had found that in all the documents pertaining to the petitioner, including the checklist for justification of arrest and the case diary extract, the police had erroneously referred to Section 403(1) BNS instead of Section 103(1) BNS (Punishment for Murder).
On June 29, the High Court upheld the Trial Court’s bail order, observing that the error showed that the arrest documents were prepared without due application of mind. Furthermore, the High Court noted that even if citing a non-existent “Section 403(1) BNS” instead of Section 103(1) was a typographical slip, its recurrence across multiple core documents cannot be swept away.
The Court observed: “The foundational basis for building up a case against the accused/respondent being found lacking, all other attempts to rectify the subsequent actions or process will have to fail.”
Case background
The crime came to light after the couple, who had tied the knot on May 12, 2025, went missing on May 23, while on their honeymoon in Meghalaya.
They were last seen checking out of a homestay in Nongriat. A few days later, their rented scooter was found abandoned near Sohrarim.
Then, on June 2, around 10 days after their disappearance, Raja’s body was discovered in a deep gorge near the Weisawdong Falls in East Khasi Hills.
His wife, Accused-Raghuwanshi, who was missing till June 8, was found near a dhaba on the Varanasi-Ghazipur main road. Later, the Meghalaya police stated that Sonam, along with 21-year-old Raj Kushwaha, was being considered one of the prime suspects in the murder of her husband. State Police have already filed a 700+ page chargesheet in the matter, claiming that murder was premeditated by Sonam and her alleged lover, Kushwaha.
