BHOPAL/ LUCKNOW: Ujala Yadav, a young student in Holipur (Inamipur) village in Ghazipur district’s Saidpur area, has claimed that she met Raja Raghuvanshi’s wife, Sonam Raghuvanshi, outside the Varanasi railway station and later at the bus terminal in Varanasi on May 8 night.
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, where she came across her and enquired about the next train to Gorakhpur.
"It was around 10 pm that she enquired about the train to Gorakhpur, I told her that it was at 3 am, so she could even take a bus to Gorakhpur from the nearby inter-state bus terminal (ISBT),” claimed Ujala.
She further said how Sonam came and enquired about the bus to Gorakhpur at platform no. 7 while she was waiting for a bus to travel to Ghazipur.
"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 had covered her face with a scarf and was wearing a T-shirt.
"She was seated adjacent 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.
Sonam also requested her not to surf social media and watch the reports on the honeymoon case after realising that Ujala was reading reports on the case on social media.
"Throughout that short journey of around an hour and a half, she kept on asking how soon she could reach Gorakhpur. I saw her face for a few seconds, when she took water from my bottle and sprinkled it on her face after removing the scarf," said Ujala.
Ujala got down near her village in Ghazipur’s Saidpur area and Sonam went ahead on the journey to Gorakhpur.
"In the morning when I saw the TV channels, 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," she said.
"That dhaba is around 10-15 km from my village. I immediately recognized her and figured she might have stepped down near the dhaba in the Nandganj area," she added.
Ujala contacted Raja Raghuvanshi’s family in Indore and informed his brother Sachin Raghuvanshi, about the incident.
"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. “Now the Meghalaya police are also in touch with me and I’ve assured them of full cooperation,” Ujala said.
Importantly, the TNIE had reported on June 11 about the possibility of Sonam having boarded a bus to Gorakhpur from ISBT in Varanasi on June 8 night and then deboarded the bus in Nandganj in Ghazipur district (around 65 km from Varanasi).
The TNIE report had also mentioned that one of the fellow passengers in the bus having seen and interacted with her.
Three days later, the young college student in Saidpur (Ghazipur) Ujala Yadav has made claims which are on the same lines, as was mentioned in the June 11 TNIE report.
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 had subsequently informed the incident to cops in Meghalaya and Indore after which the Nandganj police rushed to the concerned dhaba and took Sonam to a one-stop center in Ghazipur city.
Sonam had resurfaced at Nandganj (Ghazipur) on the intervening night of June 8-9, just a few hours after her alleged lover and family business’s employee Raj Kushwah and three henchmen were arrested from MP and UP 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.
On June 8, she left by road in a vehicle arranged by her alleged lover Raj Kushwah to go to Siliguri, where according to their plan, she would’ve re-surfaced and then narrated the story of having been kidnapped in Meghalaya, police said.
“When the first arrest in the case, Akash Rajput, was made by plain-clothed cops in UP’s Lalitpur district on June 8 evening, Raj (who wasn’t nabbed by then) came to know from a local contact in Lalitpur about Akash having been abducted by unidentified men. Sensing something wrong, he immediately rang Sonam who was on way to Siliguri and asked her to re-surface as soon as possible and narrate the concocted kidnapping story,” the East Khasi Hills district SP said.
Was Sonam planning to go to Nepal?
Both Gorakhpur in eastern UP and Siliguri in West Bengal are common transit points to Nepal. The distance from Gorakhpur to Sunauli-Bhairawa Indo-Nepal border is around 95 km (around 2 hours drive), while the distance between Siliguri and Indo-Nepal border at Kakarbhitta is just around 36 km.
“Criminals from India have often used Nepal to go underground, taking into account this latest claim by the Ghazipur (UP) girl about Sonam being in a hurry to go to Gorakhpur on June 8 night, possibility of Sonam also trying to escape from Gorakhpur or even Siliguri to Nepal cannot be totally ruled out,” a source in MP police who was part of the June 8-9 joint operation by MP and Meghalaya police told this newspaper.
Importantly, after talking to Sonam over phone on June 8-9 intervening night, her brother Govind Raghuvanshi too had come down to Ghazipur via Gorakhpur only.
