Shillong, Jun 29: The Meghalaya High Court today dismissed an appeal by the state government and upheld the bail granted to Sonam Raghuvanshi, the prime suspect in the May 2025 honeymoon murder of her husband, Raja Raghuvanshi.
A lower court had granted Sonam bail in April but the state appealed. While the High Court has reserved its verdict until June 10, it was reported that the single judge bench of Justice Wanlura Diengdoh did not find sufficient merit in the government’s case.
Sonam was granted bail on the grounds that she was not accurately told the reasons for her arrest by police, which thus caused prejudice to her defence. In a significant slip-up, the police had erroneously referred to Section 403(1) BNS instead of Section 103(1). The latter is the correct section for punishment for murder. The police had not just made this mistake once but several times, including in the checklist for justification of arrest, memo of arrest, inspection memo, intimation of rights of the arrested person and case diary extract.
Challenging the lower court, state Advocate General Amit Kumar had submitted that there was not a single line in Sonam’s fourth bail application indicating that any actual prejudice had been caused by the procedural error.
Kumar maintained that Sonam was fully aware of the serious charges against her, including murder, as evidenced by her signature on arrest memos and the remand orders. He had also referred to a Supreme Court case as precedent where an irregularity, in the absence of demonstrable prejudice, is, at best, a curable defect rather than a justification for bail.
Lastly, Kumar argued that the accused’s chances of absconding are very high. In response, Justice Diengdoh said that the bail conditions are very clear and the law will take its own course if she absconds.
After the High Court decision, it was subsequently informed that the Meghalaya government is likely to move the Supreme Court over the bail plea.
