Sonam Raghuvanshi Found Crying at Dhaba, Says She Was Abducted After Husband’s Murder

9 June | News18

Sonam Raghuvanshi, arrested for allegedly plotting her husband Raja Raghuvanshi’s murder, has claimed she is innocent and was abducted.

Sonam Raghuvanshi, arrested on charges of murdering her husband, Raja Raghuvanshi, in her first statement after being taken into custody, has claimed innocence and has alleged she was abducted.

According to sources with the police, Sonam claimed she was not an accused, but a victim in the case.

She also alleged that she, after abduction, was abandoned in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur, from where she called her brother.

Addressing a press conference in the event, the Meghalaya Police said Sonam is also one of the prime accused in the case. She had hired killers for the murder of her husband, Raja Raghuvanshi, they had earlier said.

The police also said that further investigations into the case are underway, now that the four accused have been arrested.

“The first person arrested is 19-year-old Akash Rajput, from Lalitpur. The second accused is Vishal Singh Chauhan, age 22 years, from Indore, and the third is Raj Singh Kushwaha, age 21 years, from Indore,” Vivek Syiem, Superintendent of Police, East Khasi Hills, said.

“Yesterday, Sonam Raghuvanshi was in Ghazipur. This afternoon, we arrested another accused from the Sagar district. One person has been detained from Nandgarh. These people committed the crime on May 23, and left soon after,” he said.

“At that time, we didn’t know it was a murder; we were looking for them. We looked for missing reports, and nobody was found. The body was found only on June 2, after which a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed and the investigation started. Within these seven days, the SIT has accumulated substantial evidence and gone down there and has zeroed down on the culprits,” the SP said.

“If we connect the dots, the preliminary investigation will reveal how this whole motive and crime was carried out. It was actually Raj Kushwaha with Sonam. When they come here, we will finally be able to confirm. All these days, Sonam and others were underground, and yesterday, when our operation started, suddenly she surfaced,” he added.

Sonam was arrested from an eatery (dhaba) on the Varanasi-Ghazipur main road.

A staffer at the ‘dhaba’ later confirmed to reporters that a woman had arrived at his eatery during the late hours of June 8 and was crying. She also asked for a phone to call up her family.

The staffer confirmed that she called up someone and informed them about her whereabouts.

Later, it was known that Sonam Raghuvanshi had called up her brother, Govind, and informed him that she was in Uttar Pradesh.

The police said she had surrendered in the case, a claim which was refuted by Raja Raghuvanshis’s family.

Raja Raghuvanshi and his wife, Sonam, both residents of Madhya Pradesh’s Indore, had gone missing during their honeymoon in the northeastern state of Meghalaya.

Raja Raghuvanshi’s body was later recovered in a gorge in Meghalaya, while Sonam remained missing.

As searches intensified, Sonam was arrested in Ghazipur in the wee hours of Monday.

Meanwhile, her family denied claims of her being involved with three others from Madhya Pradesh in her husband’s murder, and demanded a CBI probe into the case.

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