'Ridiculous': Meghalaya HC Slams Arrest Memo That Labelled Sonam Raghuvanshi 'Army Deserter'
'Ridiculous': Meghalaya HC Slams Arrest Memo That Labelled Sonam Raghuvanshi 'Army Deserter' Published By, Last Updated: July 02, 2026, 14:30 IST Meghalaya HC dismissed the
'Ridiculous': Meghalaya HC Slams Arrest Memo That Labelled Sonam Raghuvanshi 'Army Deserter' Published By, Last Updated: July 02, 2026, 14:30 IST Meghalaya HC dismissed the state's plea to cancel Sonam Raghuvanshi's bail in the Raja Raghuvanshi murder case, criticizing police for flawed arrest grounds. Rapid Read Sonam was arrested in Ghazipur on June 9, 2025, and remained in judicial custody for more than ten months The Meghalaya High Court has dismissed the state government’s plea seeking cancellation of the bail granted to Sonam Raghuvanshi, one of the accused in the Raja Raghuvanshi honeymoon murder case, while strongly criticising the manner in which the police prepared the grounds of her arrest. The court took exception to the arrest intimation document served on Sonam after her arrest on June 9, 2025, observing that instead of explaining the allegations against her in the murder case, it incorrectly stated that she was suspected of “deserting the armed forces", committing an offence outside India and failing to notify her residence after being released as a convict. Justice W Diengdoh noted that the document, issued at the One Stop Centre in Ghazipur and bearing Sonam’s signature, reflected a complete lack of application of mind. “It is evident that such preparation was made without any application of mind, oblivious to the factum of the case against the accused/respondent, and nowhere is found any specific allegation or information as to what the actual charges against her are (sic)," the court observed.
“Some of the entries/contents appears to be ridiculous, for example, ‘You are suspected of being a deserter from any of the Armed Forces of the Union’ and another which reads as ‘You are suspected of being involved in an offence committed outside India’ and yet another entry which reads as ‘You, being a released convict, failed to notify your residence and any change of, or absence from, such residence after release…’," it said. The High Court held that such glaring errors undermined the very process of arrest. “If this is the manner in which the intimation of the grounds of arrest is made, the same reflects a total non-application of judicious mind on the part of the arresting agency, which strikes at the root of the process of arrest of an accused person, leading to this Court to come to the conclusion that the arrestee does have a strong case to contend that no such effective grounds have ever been intimated to her at the initial stage of her arrest," the court held. The judgment also dealt with the State’s submission that repeated references in the arrest records to Section 403(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, a provision that does not exist, instead of Section 103(1), which deals with murder, were merely typographical errors. Rejecting that explanation, the court said, “The fact that such an apparent error appears at several portions of the records herein, again, the same reflects non-application of mind by the authorities concerned, which is not fitting an action on their part." “The foundational basis for building up a case against the accused/respondent being found lacking, all other attempts to rectify the subsequent actions or process will have to fail," the judgment added.
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