The Meghalaya High Court has upheld the bail granted to Sonam Raghuvanshi, one of the accused in the Raja Raghuvanshi honeymoon murder case, and has harshly criticized the police for the manner of their arrest. Refusing the government of Meghalaya to revoke her bail, the court told them that the arrest records reflected a lack of application of mind and failed to properly inform the accused of the allegations against her.
Justice W. Diengdoh took great exception to the arrest intimation document sent on Sonam after her arrest on 9 June 2025. It was not directly stated that she was arrested for killing her husband Raja Raghuvanshi, but it contained a number of unrelated charges not related to the case. These were deserting the armed forces, committing an offence outside India and not informing authorities of her residence after she was released as a convict.
The High Court called these entries “ridiculous” and said they showed a glaring failure on the part of the arresting authorities to apply their mind while preparing such an important legal document. Moreover, nowhere in the arrest memo was there any specific reference to the actual allegations in the murder case so that the accused was not properly informed of the reasons for her arrest.
According to the judgment, the arrest intimation document was prepared at the One Stop Centre in Ghazipur and even Sonam Raghuvanshi's signature was included in the document. However, the court ruled that only the signature could not substitute for the legal necessity of properly explaining the grounds of arrest. Such procedural lapses, Justice Diengdoh said, were beneath the very integrity of a legal arrest and violated the constitutional protections of an accused person.
The State government attempted to defend the errors by arguing that repeated references in the arrest records to Section 403(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita— an offence which does not exist— were merely typographical mistakes. The prosecution argued that the intended reference was Section 103(1) which deals with the offence of murder.
The High Court was not convinced by this explanation. The same incorrect provision was everywhere in the records, it said, and this meant that the errors were far more serious than the occasional typographical mistake itself. The court observed that repeated errors were the result of poorly applied minds on the part of the authorities and were not to be taken lightly, especially in the case of serious criminal charges.
The court observed in its judgment that if the very foundation on which an arrest is made is flawed, subsequent attempts to rectify procedural lapses cannot cure the defect. Sonam had made a strong case that she had never been effectively informed of the grounds of her arrest at the initial stage, making the grant of bail legally justified.
The High Court made it clear however that its observations were limited to the process that was followed in the arrest of Sonam Raghuvanshi. The court made it clear that its findings would not affect the ongoing criminal investigation, the chargesheet already filed, the framing of charges or the trial of the accused persons.
The court also referred to the earlier ruling of *Labius Arengh v. State of Meghalaya* that the investigating agencies must re-examine how arrest memos and grounds of arrest are prepared for the next time, as the court observed. The court also said that the accused persons should be informed clearly and accurately about the offence for which they are being arrested in accordance with constitutional and statutory safeguards.
The case is related to the murder of Raja Raghuvanshi, a 29-year-old businessman from Indore, who married Sonam on May 11, 2025. They went to Meghalaya for their honeymoon and later visited Sohra, where they both were reported missing on May 23. Raja’s body was later found in a gorge near Weisawdong Falls. Sonam Raghuvanshi, her alleged partner Raj Kushwaha and 3 others are now in custody for conspiring to murder Raja.
The criminal trial of the sensational honeymoon murder case will continue, but the High Court’s decision has made clear the necessity of due process in arrests. Procedural safeguards are not a mere formal matter, the ruling says, but fundamental legal obligations that investigating agencies have to respect no matter how severe the allegations are against an accused.
