Raja Raghuvanshi Murder: Meghalaya Govt Challenges Sonam Raghuvanshi's Bail, Cites Typo In Arrest Memo

The State of Meghalaya has moved the Supreme Court against a High Court order that upheld bail granted to Sonam Raghuvanshi, the prime accused in the murder of her husband Raja Raghuvanshi during their honeymoon in Meghalaya last year.

The Special Leave Petition challenges the judgment dated June 29, 2026, by which the High Court of Meghalaya at Shillong dismissed the State's plea and refused to interfere with a trial court order that had freed the accused on a technical ground.

According to the petition, the trial court granted bail to Sonam Raghuvanshi essentially because one of seven documents prepared at the time of her arrest carried a typographical error, citing "Section 403 BNS" instead of "Section 103 BNS," the provision under which she is charged with murder. The State contends that six other contemporaneous documents, all bearing her own signature, correctly recorded the grounds of her arrest, and that she never raised the issue in her first three bail applications.

The case relates to the killing of Raja Raghuvanshi, whose body was recovered from a gorge near Sohra on June 2, 2025, ten days after he went missing during his honeymoon with Sonam. Investigators allege the murder was carefully planned before the couple even left Indore, in conspiracy with Sonam's associate Raj Kushwaha and three other men who trekked alongside the couple before the killing near Wei Sawdong, where he was allegedly attacked with machetes and his body thrown into a deep gorge.

Sonam was arrested in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, on June 9, 2025, after allegedly staging a plan to resurface with a false kidnapping story. The petition states that at the time of arrest, she signed five separate documents, including the memorandum of arrest and an intimation of rights, all indicating she had been informed of the reasons for her arrest. A magistrate in Sohra who examined her days later also recorded that she had confirmed her awareness of the grounds.

The State's plea notes that Sonam filed four bail applications in under a year, the first three rejected after courts found a prima facie case, a flight risk, and a likelihood of her influencing witnesses. It was only in the fourth application, filed in April, that non-communication of arrest grounds was raised for the first time. The trial court accepted this and granted bail on April 27 without examining whether any actual prejudice had been caused, prompting the State's unsuccessful petition before the High Court.

The SLP argues that this conflicts with binding precedent, including State of Karnataka v. Sri Darshan, which held that a procedural lapse in communicating arrest grounds, unaccompanied by demonstrable prejudice, cannot alone justify releasing an accused facing a murder charge.

It adds that the requirement to furnish such grounds in writing was made prospective by the Supreme Court in Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra, and could not apply to an arrest made months earlier. Neither court, the State argues, examined actual prejudice, despite Sonam having legal counsel from the time of arrest and having contested three earlier bail pleas on merits without raising the issue. Reversing three orders denying bail without any change in circumstances also breaches settled law on successive bail applications, the petition states.

The petition further cites forensic findings, including a CFSL report said to place Sonam at the same locations as the deceased and other accused through CCTV footage and seized material, corroborating the movement of co-accused Vishal Singh Chauhan, Aakash Singh Rajput and Anand Kurmi along the same route.

Raja's brother, Vipin Raghuvanshi, had filed the missing person's complaint that led to registration of the FIR. The chargesheet, filed in September 2025 against five accused, was supplemented in February to add arms-related charges against a sixth person.

The matter is listed for hearing before the Supreme Court tomorrow.

Case Title: STATE OF MEGHALAYA vs. SMTI. SONAM RAGUVANSHI @ BITTI @ BITTU