Honeymoon Murder Shocks the Nation

Anything about Sonam Raghuvanshi must come with the caveat that what is available so far is the police version which often doesn’t hold up in court. Even otherwise this was a criminal case that became high profile much before it was known that there was a murder.

Sonam, 24, newly married to Raja Raghuvanshi, 27, a resident of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, went on a honeymoon to Meghalaya on May 20. Three days later the couple disappeared which became headlines. On June 2, Raja’s body was discovered in a gorge. A week later Sonam came to a dhaba on a highway leading to Varanasi. She didnt know how she got there.

By then however the Meghalaya police had already found that Raja was killed at the behest of Sonam and her lover Raj Kushwaha, who used to work in her family’s business. They had hired three men who followed the couple into Meghalaya. Just as she had got Raja to organise the honeymoon in the north-east, she also maneuvred him into the trek where the accomplices waylaid and killed him.

Sonam, according to media reports, is said to have confessed now. Many elements have made this case sensational. The motive, for one, remains befuddling. It was an arranged marriage. To see murder as a better alternative to resisting the social pressure to marry, or walking out of a marriage, is extraordinary. Secondly, the elaborate planning–from organising the killers, to doing it in another state, to having multiple phones to avoid traceage. And then there is the grief of both the families caught in this maelstorm and being updated on a daily basis by the media.

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