The Meghalaya High Court on Monday dismissed the application filed by the state government challenging the trial court order granting bail to Sonam Raghuvanshi, the prime accused in the sensational 2025 honeymoon murder case involving the death of her husband, Raja Raghuvanshi.
The single-judge Bench of Justice W Diengdoh pronounced the operative order after reserving judgment on June 10, following more than 10 days of arguments advanced by both sides.
The Additional Deputy Commissioner (Judicial), Shillong, had granted bail to Sonam in April 2026, holding that the investigating agency failed to effectively communicate the statutory grounds of arrest to her, thereby violating the procedural safeguards governing arrest and causing prejudice to her defence.
The trial court observed that several arrest-related documents, including the arrest memo, inspection memo, checklist for justification of arrest, intimation of rights of the arrested person and extracts of the case diary, consistently referred to Section 403(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) instead of Section 103(1) BNS, which prescribes punishment for murder.
According to the trial court, none of the documents supplied to Sonam disclosed that she had been arrested for the graver offence punishable under Section 103(1) BNS, nor did they effectively communicate the factual grounds constituting the offence of murder. Rejecting the State’s contention that the discrepancy was merely a clerical or typographical error, the court held that such an error, having been repeated across every arrest-related document, could not be treated as an inadvertent mistake.
Challenging the bail order, the Meghalaya government contended before the High Court that the alleged procedural defect had not caused any actual prejudice to the accused.
Advocate General Amit Kumar argued that Sonam was fully aware that she had been arrested in connection with the murder of Raja Raghuvanshi, as evidenced by her signatures on the arrest and remand documents, the repeated judicial remand proceedings, and the fact that she had been represented by legal counsel throughout the investigation and had already filed three earlier bail applications.
The State further relied upon the Supreme Court’s decision in State of Karnataka v. Sri Darshan (2025), submitting that in the absence of demonstrable prejudice, procedural irregularities constituted curable defects and could not justify the grant of bail or invalidate an otherwise lawful arrest.
During the course of the hearing, Justice Diengdoh questioned why the same error had appeared consistently across multiple arrest documents if it was genuinely a typographical mistake. The Court orally observed that the arrest documentation appeared to have been prepared using standard templates without due application of mind and even contained an irrelevant reference describing the accused as a deserter from the armed forces, raising doubts as to whether the statutory grounds of arrest had actually been explained to her.
While conceding that typographical errors had occurred in the arrest documents, the Advocate General maintained that the accused knew about the murder allegations from the very beginning. He further argued that there was a substantial likelihood of the accused absconding if allowed to remain on bail. In response, Justice Diengdoh observed during the hearing that the bail conditions imposed by the trial court were sufficiently stringent and that the law would take its own course in the event of any violation of those conditions.
The case arises out of the alleged murder of Indore-based businessman Raja Raghuvanshi, who married Sonam on May 12, 2025. The couple travelled to Meghalaya for their honeymoon and went missing on May 23 after checking out of a homestay in Nongriat. Their rented scooter was subsequently recovered abandoned near Sohrarim.
On June 2, 2025, Raja’s body was recovered from a deep gorge near Weisawdong Falls in East Khasi Hills district. Sonam, who remained untraceable for several days, was eventually located on June 8 near a roadside eatery on the Varanasi-Ghazipur highway in Uttar Pradesh.
According to the Meghalaya Police, Sonam and 21-year-old Raj Kushwaha were identified as the principal accused in the alleged murder conspiracy. The investigating agency has since filed a chargesheet running into more than 700 pages, alleging that the murder was premeditated and executed pursuant to a criminal conspiracy hatched by Sonam and her alleged lover, Raj Kushwaha. The criminal trial will continue independently notwithstanding the High Court’s decision affirming the grant of bail.
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