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Sonam Raghuvanshi case: SIT to reconstruct crime scene in Meghalaya
The woman was arrested from Ghazipur early Monday, while her alleged lover Raj Kushwaha was apprehended from Indore in Madhya Pradesh on Sunday night.
Guwahati: A Special Investigation Team is planning to take the alleged killers of Raja Raghuvanshi to Sohra in Meghalaya and nearby localities to reconstruct the crime, a senior officer said on Wednesday after a Shillong court remanded the victim’s wife Sonam Raghuvanshi and the four other accused to eight days of police custody.
East Khasi Hills district SP Vivek Syiem said police have a watertight case against the accused. He said they would be questioned both individually and as a group to piece together the sequence of events before and after the murder but did not specify when the police plan to take them to Sohra.
“Police had sought 10-day remand of all the accused. The court granted 8 days of police custody,” Syiem said.
“There are a lot of loose ends that we need to tie up, we can confirm (them) only after her (Sonam’s) interrogation. In our evidence it is proven that she is very much involved; it will become clear after her interrogation,” added Syiem.
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The 24-year-old woman was arrested from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh early Monday, while her alleged lover Raj Kushwaha was apprehended from Indore in Madhya Pradesh on Sunday night. Police have said the two hired three men, Police have said the two hired three men, Akash Rajput from Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh, Vishal Singh Chauhan from Indore, Madhya Pradesh and Anand Kurmi from Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, to kill Raghuvanshi while the couple were on their honeymoon in Meghalaya.
A Meghalaya police officer in Shillong told PTI that Sonam convinced her husband that they need to make an offering at the Kamakhya Devi Temple in Assam before consummating their marriage, and he agreed to accompany her there.
Sonam and Raja wed in Indore on May 11 and arrived in Meghalaya via Guwahati in Assam on May 21.
Syiem, who is overseeing the investigation, said the contract killers reached Guwahati the day after. They bought a machete from a shop near their hotel in Guwahati, he added.
Sonam and Raja reached Guwahati on May 20, reached Shillong (located around 2 hours drive from Guwahati) on May 21 and from there took a hired scooter to reach Sohra, nearly 50 km away, on May 22. They checked out of their homestay in Sohra early on May 23, the day both Raja and Sonam went missing.
The couple went missing on May 23 in Sohra in East Khasi Hills district, hours after checking out of a homestay at Nongriat village.
“Sonam coerced her husband to take her deep into the jungles of Nongriat with the belief that the hitmen she hired would have a better chance of killing him somewhere on the secluded route. But, since there were too many tourists trekking to Nongriat on May 22 and May 23, they couldn’t kill him there,” another police officer said.
Raghuvanshi was finally killed near the Weisawdong Falls, and the contract killers dumped his body into a nearby gorge, the officer said.
SP Syiem said Sonam was in touch with her boyfriend Raj, who coordinated with the killers, throughout the day of the murder.
After the murder, the SP said, Sonam took a taxi from Mawkdok to Shillong, and then hired a tourist cab to Guwahati before boarding multiple trains to avoid detection, though she claims to have reached Indore directly. “This is still being verified,” he said.
“We have gathered CCTV evidence, making this investigation a very tight-knit one,” the SP said. “We are committed to submitting a water-tight chargesheet,” he said.
Sonam was brought to Shillong late Tuesday on a three-day transit remand from a court in Ghazipur. After a medical examination, she was kept overnight at the Sadar police station before being taken to court.
The other four accused were brought from Indore on a six-day transit remand, the SP said.
(With PTI inputs)
