The Supreme Court on Friday declined to cancel the bail granted to Sonam Raghuvanshi, the prime accused in the alleged murder of her husband, Raja Raghuvanshi, during their honeymoon in Meghalaya last
year.
The Meghalaya government had moved the top court after the Meghalaya High Court upheld a Shillong court’s April order granting bail to Raghuvanshi.
During the hearing, the Supreme Court indicated that it was initially inclined to cancel the bail. However, it ultimately decided against interfering, observing that Raghuvanshi had already been released.
Sonam’s counsel submitted that there was no further recovery to be made in the case and argued that strict bail conditions had already been imposed. “There is no recovery to be made. Already, strict conditions have been imposed. I’m already in Shillong. She cannot tamper with evidence.”
The bench responded, “We are trying to balance the issue. Let the trial continue.”
When the counsel reiterated that Sonam Raghuvanshi was already in Shillong and bound by the conditions imposed by the court, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the bench that she had already been released.
“She is released already,” the Solicitor General said.
The Supreme Court then observed, “If she is released already, we would not want to interfere.”
The Solicitor General also referred to the Pune murder case of Ketan Agarwal during the hearing.
“Recently, a wife killed her husband because he was wearing a wig,” Mehta submitted, referring to the Siya-Ketan case. He further argued that such incidents had increased after the present case.
The bench concluded by observing, “Prima facie, we were inclined to stay, but for the fact that she has been released already, we don’t want to be too harsh.”
How Bail Was Granted
Sonam Raghuvanshi, a resident of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in June last year in connection with the alleged murder of her businessman husband, Raja Raghuvanshi.
The couple had gone missing on May 23 while vacationing in Meghalaya’s Sohra area. Raja’s body was recovered from a deep gorge around nine days later.
On April 27, a trial court in Shillong granted Sonam bail after holding that the investigating agency had failed to properly communicate the grounds of her arrest. The court noted that the arrest memo, justification checklist, inspection memo and case diary extract all referred to Section 403(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita instead of Section 103(1), the provision relating to the offence of murder.
The trial court observed that the repeated reference to the wrong provision could not be dismissed as a mere clerical error. It said none of the arrest-related documents informed Sonam that she was being arrested on a murder charge and also noted that the specific facts constituting the alleged offence had not been communicated to her at the time of arrest.
The Meghalaya government challenged the order before the high court, arguing that the incorrect section mentioned in the documents was only a typographical error and had caused no prejudice to the accused.
The high court, however, dismissed the appeal, questioning why the same mistake had been repeated across several official documents. Justice W Diengdoh observed that parts of the arrest records appeared to have been copied from standard templates, including an unrelated reference describing the accused as a deserter from the armed forces.
“It is evident that such preparation was made without any application of mind… and nowhere is found any specific allegation or information as to what the actual charges against her are,” the high court had observed.
“If this is the manner in which the intimation of the grounds of arrest is made, the same reflects a total non-application of judicious mind on the part of the arresting agency,” it said.
The Meghalaya government subsequently moved the Supreme Court challenging the high court’s order.
