Before Raja Raghuvanshi’s honeymoon murder, macabre plan to fake Sonam’s death to stop wedding

“This plan was hatched way before the marriage in Indore. The main mastermind is Raj. Sonam played along and was part of the plan,” East Khasi Hills SP Vivek Syiem said.

“Right from the month of February, they had thought of ways to make Sonam disappear. They tried to hatch a plan in which it would seem that Sonam was washed away in a river. Another plan was to kill someone, burn the body and then claim that it was Sonam’s. But all of these things didn’t fructify,” the officer said.

Sonam, who is being questioned by police, told officers that she was forced to marry Raja and that was why she decided to follow Kushwaha’s plan to kill her husband.

During their honeymoon to the Northeast, the three people Kushwaha and Sonam had tasked with killing Raja made three attempts on his life, in Guwahati and Meghalaya, before finally doing so in an isolated area in Meghalaya, police said.

Family members of Raja Raghuvanshi cut out the picture of his wife Sonam Raghuvanshi from a poster of their marriage after she was accused of plotting his murder. (PTI Photo)

As Meghalaya Police began the first day of what will be an eight-day interrogation, Sonam Raghuvanshi expressed remorse over her husband’s killing, officers said.

Meghalaya DIG Davis Marak said both main accused — Sonam and Kushwaha — have accepted their involvement in the conspiracy but are pointing fingers at each other. “Sonam is displaying remorse, but whether it is genuine or an act is yet to be determined,” he said.

Kushwaha allegedly enlisted three young men from Indore — two of his friends and a cousin — to carry out the plan. “They are not professional contract killers. They were actually trying to do a favour for Raj (Kushwaha),” SP Syiem said.

Kushwaha and the three other Indore men — Vishal Chauhan, Akash Rajput and Anand Kurmi — have been arrested. Sonam surrendered before police in Uttar Pradesh and has been handed over to Meghalaya Police.

Syiem said that when the plans to thwart the wedding failed, Kushwaha and Sonam changed tactics. “So when Raja and Sonam got married and went to Kamakhya Temple (in Guwahati), the group (of men from Indore sent to kill Raja) was also present. They had arrived before May 19 and had plans to eliminate Raja in Guwahati. Since this did not work out, Sonam made plans to go to Shillong,” the SP said.

Finally, at the isolated location in Meghalaya, the three men hacked Raja to death. “His body was thrown into the gorge at about 2.18 pm,” Syiem said.

He said Sonam gave her raincoat to Akash who had thrown away his blood-soaked shirt. “One of the scooters was driven by Sonam when they left Weisawdong (the place in Meghalaya where the murder happened), and when they got down at Eddy Point, Akash got down to throw the raincoat too, because it also had blood stains,” Syiem said.

Kushwaha had prepared for Sonam’s escape down to the smallest detail. “Vishal handed over a burkha to Sonam that Kushwaha had arranged. She then boarded a taxi to Guwahati, and then a bus to Siliguri, from where she went to Patna and subsequently Lucknow, from where she eventually took a bus to Indore,” the officer said.

Even as the murder plot succeeded, Raj maintained contingency plans. “When Kushwaha was alerted that the three people he had sent had been profiled by the police, he suggested to Sonam that she leave Indore, go to Siliguri, and resurface there as a victim of abduction,” Syiem said.

The scheme began to unravel when arrests started being made. “When the main accused was picked up by the police in UP, Kushwaha panicked and told Sonam to call her family and say that she just escaped from an abduction bid,” Syiem said.