Image Source: Agencies

June 15, 2025: Sonam’s alleged lover and the key conspirator, had ordered ration supplies worth ?5000 online for her in the hideout apartment in Indore.
Sonam Raghuvanshi, accused of orchestrating the murder of her husband Raja Raghuvanshi during their honeymoon in Meghalaya, went into hiding at a rented flat in Indore that was reportedly stocked with groceries worth ?5,000.
Investigators claim that Vishal Singh Chauhan, one of the three alleged contract killers hired to kill Raja, leased the apartment shortly after the murder. Police sources, as reported by a news agency, said that Chauhan was the first to use a machete against Raja. Raj Kushwaha, Sonam’s alleged lover and the key conspirator, had ordered ration supplies worth ?5000 online for her in the hideout apartment, a source told NDTV. After Sonam fled the scene of the murder in Meghalaya's East Khasi Hills district, where Raja's body was discovered on June 2 in a gorge near a waterfall, police believe the flat served as a temporary shelter for Sonam.
Ghazipur girl asserts that she and the suspect Sonam took a bus to Gorakhpur.
Ujala Yadav, a young student from Holipur (Inamipur) village in the Saidpur area of the Ghazipur district, claims that on May 8 she met Raja Raghuvanshi's wife, Sonam Raghuvanshi, outside the Varanasi railway station and later at the Varanasi bus terminal. Raja's wife, Sonam, now in Meghalaya police custody, had surrendered in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur, after remaining in hiding for 17 days.
Ujala recalled that Sonam was accompanied by two young men outside the Varanasi railway station. When Ujala encountered Sonam, she inquired about the next train to Gorakhpur. "She enquired about the train to Gorakhpur around 10 p.m., and I told her that it would be at 3 a.m., so she could even take a bus to Gorakhpur from the inter-state bus terminal (ISBT) nearby," Ujala claimed. She went on to describe how, while she was waiting for a bus to Ghazipur, Sonam came to platform 7 and inquired about the bus to Gorakhpur. "One of my close relatives had died, owing to which I had come down from Lucknow to travel to Ghazipur. When I reached the interstate bus terminal (ISBT) close to the Varanasi railway station, she (Sonam) also came there," she said.
Both of them boarded the same bus to Gorakhpur via Ghazipur. Ujala recalled that Sonam was wearing a T-shirt and had a scarf over her face. She was sitting next to my seat. During the journey, she asked a male passenger seated next to her to lend his phone to make a call to someone, but he refused to oblige,” Ujala said.
“That male passenger subsequently changed the seat, after which she (Sonam) shifted to my side," she added.
Ujala spoke about how Sonam borrowed her phone, typed a number and later deleted it from the call list, before returning the phone to her.
After realizing that Ujala was reading reports on the case on social media, Sonam also asked her not to surf social media or watch reports about the honeymoon case. "She kept asking when she could get to Gorakhpur, even though it was only about an hour and a half long. Ujala said, "She took water from my bottle and sprinkled it on her face after removing the scarf. I saw her face for a few seconds." Ujala got down near her village in Ghazipur’s Saidpur area and Sonam went ahead on the journey to Gorakhpur.
She stated, "I saw the news about Raja Raghuvanshi’s missing wife Sonam Raghuvanshi resurfacing after 17 days at a dhaba in Nandganj in my native Ghazipur district in the morning when I saw the TV channels." "My village is about 10-15 kilometers away from that dhaba. She continued, "I knew her right away and thought she might have stopped near the dhaba in the Nandganj area." Ujala reported the incident to Raja Raghuvanshi's brother Sachin Raghuvanshi, who lived in Indore. "Sachin Raghuvanshi sent pictures of four suspects (all young men), but it didn’t match with those two youths who were present with her outside the Varanasi railway station on the night of May 8," said Ujala.
Ujala subsequently reported the incident to the Nandganj police station in Ghazipur district. Ujala stated, "I've assured them of full cooperation." He added, "Now the Meghalaya police are also in touch with me." Sonam was traced after 17 days at the roadside dhaba in Ankushpur village in Ghazipur district of eastern UP at around 1.15 am on June 9 and borrowed the dhaba owner Sahil Yadav’s phone to make a call to her elder brother Govind, who was searching for her in Meghalaya.
He then told the police in Meghalaya and Indore about the incident, and the Nandganj police went right to the dhaba and took Sonam to a one-stop center in Ghazipur. On the intervening nights of June 8 and 9, Sonam reemerged at Nandganj (Ghazipur), just a few hours after Raj Kushwah, her alleged lover and family business employee, and three henchmen were arrested in a joint operation by Meghalaya and Madhya Pradesh police. Sources in Indore police have told TNIE that while Raja and henchmen were being questioned, they had told Sonam will resurface in the next few hours.
The north-eastern state’s East Khasi Hills district police superintendent Vivek Syiel told journalists in Shillong on June 12 that after getting husband Raja killed on May 23 by the three henchmen, Sonam had returned to Indore via bus, taxi and train on May 26 after travelling through five states and stayed in hiding in her home city till June 8.
She traveled by road on June 8 in a vehicle arranged by her alleged lover Raj Kushwah to Siliguri, where, according to police, she would have resurfaced and told the story that she had been kidnapped in Meghalaya. “When plain-clothed police arrested Akash Rajput on June 8 in the Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh, Raj (who had not yet been apprehended) learned from a local contact in Lalitpur that Akash had been kidnapped by unknown men. The East Khasi Hills district SP stated, "He immediately rang Sonam, who was on her way to Siliguri, and asked her to re-surface as soon as possible and narrate the concocted kidnapping story. He sensed something was wrong."