The Meghalaya High Court on Monday upheld a Shillong court’s April 2026 order granting bail to Sonam Raghuvanshi, the prime accused in the alleged murder of her husband, Raja Raghuvanshi, during their honeymoon in Meghalaya last year.
A single bench of Justice W. Diengdoh dismissed the state government’s appeal challenging the bail order. The court had reserved its verdict on June 10 after hearing arguments from both sides over a period of more than 10 days. A detailed judgment is awaited.
Sonam was granted bail by the Additional Deputy Commissioner (Judicial), Shillong, primarily on the ground that the investigating agency had failed to properly communicate the grounds of her arrest, thereby prejudicing her legal defence.
The trial court had observed that police documents, including the checklist for justification of arrest, arrest memo, inspection memo, intimation of rights of the arrested person and extracts of the case diary, repeatedly mentioned Section 403(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) instead of Section 103(1), which pertains to the offence of murder.
The Shillong court had rejected the prosecution’s argument that the repeated reference to the incorrect provision was merely a clerical or typographical error.
The court noted that none of the arrest-related documents informed Sonam that she had been arrested under Section 103(1) BNS for murder. It further observed that the formats used by the police also failed to specify the factual grounds constituting the offence.
Challenging the bail order, the Meghalaya government argued before the High Court that the procedural error had not caused any actual prejudice to the accused. Advocate General Amit Kumar submitted that Sonam was fully aware of the allegations against her, having signed the arrest documents, appeared before courts during remand proceedings and filed multiple bail applications with legal representation.