It was meant to be a honeymoon, new beginning and a celebration. But by the time it ended, a young man was dead, his body lying in a gorge near the remote waterfalls of Meghalaya. And what appeared to be a romantic getaway had revealed itself as one of the most chillingly premeditated murders in recent memory.
On May 11, Raja Raghuvanshi, a 29-year-old transporter from Indore, married Sonam Raghuvanshi in a traditional community ceremony. Eleven days later, on May 23, he was ambushed and killed during what could have been the most joyful phase of his new life. His murder wasn’t the result of a sudden argument or a moment of passion. Rather it had been carefully planned weeks in advance and executed with chilling calm.
The plan was simple in structure but cold in detail: lure Raja on a honeymoon far from home, isolate him in an unfamiliar terrain, and kill him in a location so remote that the police would struggle to find the truth.
The honeymoon idea came from Sonam herself, who had proposed the seven-day trip to Assam and Meghalaya as a wedding gift. Raja had agreed, unaware that the woman who now shared his new life had already set his death in motion.
Three men — Akash, Vishal, and Anand — had travelled ahead of the couple. They weren’t professional killers, but were trusted friends of Raj Kushwah, Sonam’s secret lover. The `50,000 they were paid was reportedly funneled through hawala channels, arranged to fund a murder disguised as a robbery or an accident.
Sonam stayed in constant touch with them, sending live coordinates over phone while her husband remained blissfully unaware.
Then the first attempts to kill Raja failed. From May 20-22, the trio made multiple efforts to intercept him, but each time, something didn’t go as planned. Still, they kept at it. Sonam reassured them. She hadn’t booked return tickets. There was no way back.
On May 23, everything aligned. In the remote forest near Wei Sawdong Falls in Sohra (Cherrapunji), Raja was led into an ambush. The attack was swift. Within minutes, he was dead. His body was dumped into a deep gorge, hidden from view, left to be lost among the rocks and mist. There was no struggle, no chance for rescue.
Sonam, composed and controlled, returned from the scene on a hired scooter along with the three killers. She left behind the scooter Raja had booked, abandoning it in another location to throw off investigators.
But she left behind her wedding ring and mangalsutra, either by intention or by accident — the evidence linking her to the man she helped kill. Then, she vanished. Clad in a burqa, Sonam began a carefully planned escape route across Meghalaya, Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. She switched vehicles, routes, and cities with rehearsed ease.
Back in Indore, confusion confounded. Her family and Raja’s believed the newlyweds had fallen to some gruesome crime in a faraway land. Prayers were held. Hope, indeed, lingered. But Sonam was waiting in the wings to reappear with a story: masked men, a robbery gone wrong, and her miraculous escape. The plan, however, had already begun to fall apart before perhaps she knew it.
On June 2, Raja’s body was recovered from a gorge near Meghalaya’s Wei Sawdong Falls. The investigation progressed in no time. Phone records, CCTV footage, and the wedding ring and mangalsutra, all pointed to premeditated murder. A joint operation across Meghalaya, MP, and UP soon tracked down the culprits. On June 8, Raj and his three friends were arrested from Indore. Hours later, Sonam resurfaced in Ghazipur, telling her fabricated tale. By then, no one was willing to believe her. She was arrested the next day and brought back to Meghalaya. Within days, she confessed.
The murder shocked the nation — not just for its brutality, but also for its chilling calculation. A honeymoon turned into a trap. Raja had no enemies. He wasn’t a man who courted danger. He was caught in a scheme — vile and deceitful, cruel and mean — but fell victim to one of the “ugliest thing that you ever have seen”.