Honeymoon murder case: Meghalaya cops back in Indore to speed up probe as new angle emerges
BHOPAL: A week after making a series of arrests in connection with the Raja Raghuvanshi murder case, the special investigation team (SIT) of the Meghalaya Police has returned to Indore again to further probe the May 23 honeymoon killing.
A three-member team headed by a deputy SP and also including two sub-inspectors has been in Indore since Tuesday to gather more evidence and record statements of more people to strengthen its probe into the Indore transporter Raja Raghuvanshi’s May 23 murder.
Prior to this, police teams from the north-eastern state had arrested four men, including the murder’s mastermind Raj Kushwaha and his three henchmen Akash, Anand and Vishal, and taken them on transit remand from Indore to Meghalaya on June 10.
Those four accused, besides Raja’s widow Sonam Raghuvanshi (identified as the principal conspirator in the case), are currently being grilled by police in Meghalaya.
According to informed sources, the SIT team from Meghalaya visited multiple spots in Indore on Tuesday and Wednesday including a rented flat in Dewas Naka area, where Sonam was in hiding between May 30 and June 7, a restaurant in Super Corridor area where the murder plot was allegedly hatched and the houses of Raja Raghuvanshi and Sonam Raghuvanshi’s families.
The cops from Meghalaya are also believed to have visited the offices and godown of Sonam’s family business in eastern Indore and gathered crucial evidence.
The visiting Meghalaya police team has also questioned and recorded statements of key members of both Raja and Sonam’s families, including Raja’s brothers and Sonam’s brother Govind.
Sonam's telephone calls: New angle in the case
The visit by the police team from the northeastern state assumes significance after the Meghalaya DGP Idashisha Nongrang said on Monday that the investigators probing the murder of Indore businessman Raja Raghuvanshi in Sohra (Cherrapunjee) were not treating the love triangle as the only motive, but are also looking into various other angles. “We are investigating whether there is anything more to this case,” the DGP had said.
Amid the ongoing investigations, a novel development related to Sonam’s telephonic conversations over the last few months has come to the fore.
As per informed sources, Sonam had talked over 100 times with someone on a mobile phone number registered in the name of Sanjay Verma. The conversations took place 100-120 times in less than a month in March-April. “Though that telephone number is registered in Sanjay Verma’s name, the possibility of the number being used by Raj Kushwaha to connect with Sonam cannot be ruled out,” a source added.
One of the initial clues which guided the SIT to Sonam and Raj was the long telephonic conversations between the two of them, particularly between May 15 and May 17.
This latest telephonic conversation between Sonam and someone talking through a phone number registered in Sanjay Verma’s name may well throw a new angle in the case.
With the Meghalaya DGP maintaining that the probe is covering all possible angles, it also remains to be seen whether the investigators zero down upon the suspected hawala transactions linked to Sonam’s family business and use of benami accounts, particularly bank accounts held in her cousin Jitendra Raghuvanshi’s name, for major money transactions.
Sonam and Raj along with three henchmen were arrested from MP and UP on June 8 and 9 in connection with Raja Raghuvanshi’s killing near a waterfall in Sohra (Cherrapunjee) on May 23, just 12 days after Sonam and Raja’s marriage in Indore. The 29-year-old Raja’s body was found in a gorge on June 2.
