
LUCKNOW: The sudden appearance of Sonam Raghuvanshi, who had gone missing along with her husband during a honeymoon trip to Meghalaya on May 23, at a dhaba in Ghazipur, over 1,100 km away from Shillong, remains shrouded in mystery.
Even a day after she was taken into custody, Sonam has remained tight-lipped about how she surfaced in Ghazipur early Monday morning. Notably, the decomposed body of her husband was recovered from a gorge in Meghalaya on June 2.
According to the Meghalaya Police, Sonam claimed she was drugged by her abductors and somehow managed to flee captivity. However, Ghazipur Police stated that she told them she had no recollection of how she ended up in Ghazipur.
“Mujhe kuch yaad nahi hai (I don’t remember anything),” Sonam reportedly said, confused, disoriented, and barefoot, as she sat before a magistrate in Ghazipur on Monday.
Even before being taken to the magistrate, she remained silent and withdrawn for 15 hours at a shelter in Ghazipur. Staff at the One Stop Centre said she showed no signs of mourning or remorse and barely responded to anyone.
According to the staff, Sonam looked frightened and had removed all symbols of a married woman, there was no sindoor, no bangles, no mangalsutra, and no toe rings. Her clothes were unclean. “She didn’t look like a newly-wed at all,” claimed a staff member.
At the shelter, she slept for hours under heavy security deployment. From 7 am to 2 pm, she stayed mostly silent, refusing breakfast and only sipping a cup of tea. She responded mainly through gestures. Around 2 pm, she ate a little dal-roti and then fell silent again.
At 6 pm, her brother Govind and her uncle came to meet her but were not allowed entry. Around 8 pm, Sonam was taken for a medical examination under tight police security. Even at the hospital, she remained mostly silent. Doctors questioned her for nearly 40 minutes, but she barely spoke.
By 11:30 pm, after the medical examination, Sonam was produced before the court and then handed over to the Meghalaya Police for further investigation.
Police sources confirmed that Sonam was presented before the Ghazipur magistrate amid tight security. The proceedings lasted nearly three hours, during which Meghalaya Police laid out the grounds for seeking her transit custody. Her legal counsel did not oppose the plea, paving the way for her departure to Shillong by late evening.
A police official who accompanied her to court said Sonam was cooperative but visibly drained. He added that she did not resist the transfer and reiterated that she could not recall how she reached Ghazipur.
Later, the Ghazipur court granted Meghalaya Police a three-day transit remand, allowing them to take Sonam to Shillong for further investigation.
While Sonam has remained silent on the grounds of having no memory, her call records and messages to a co-accused suggest otherwise. Investigators suspect she may have been coached. Police sources also mentioned that all flights from Meghalaya to Varanasi were checked, and there was no trace of Sonam travelling between the two locations by air.