Interrogation by Meghalaya Police of the five accused, including Sonam Raghuvanshi, in her husband Raja’s murder has revealed that her alleged boyfriend Raj Kushwaha was the mastermind of the entire plot. The accused in the Raja Raghuvanshi murder case being escorted in a police vehicle after they were produced in a court in Shillong. (PTI)

Details of the plan and execution narrated by the accused during interrogation on Wednesday also disclosed that there were three other plans, which didn’t materialise, before Raja Raghuvanshi, a native of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, was murdered last month in Meghalaya during a honeymoon trip with Sonam.

“All the accused have admitted to (have committed) the offence. Sonam has admitted her complicity. The whole thing (conspiracy) had happened in Indore. The plan was hatched just before her marriage to Raja and the mastermind of this was Raj and Sonam played along with the plan and was a part and partner,” said Vivek Syiem, police superintendent of East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya.

He said that the three killers — Akash Thakur, Anand Kurmi and Vishal Chauhan — are friends and one of them is Raj’s cousin. While earlier it was speculated that it was a contract killing, interrogation revealed that the killers had plotted to kill Raja as a favour for their friend Raj. Planning for the murder had started in February, three months before Raja and Sonam’s wedding, the probe revealed.

“The accused thought of different ways in which they could make Sonam disappear (before the wedding). One idea was to make her get washed away in a river (and claim she had disappeared or drowned), another was to murder a woman, put that person’s body in Sonam’s scooter, burn it and pass it off as Sonam’s. But all these plans didn’t fructify,” Syiem said.

When Raja and Sonam got married and came for ‘darshan’ at Kamakhya Temple (in Guwahati) on May 20, the three contract killers were also in the same city. They had come a few days earlier, on May 19, and had plans to kill Raja somewhere in Guwahati. Since that also didn’t fructify, they made a plan to come to Shillong and then Sohra, police said.

“That’s how the plan panned out whereby they met in Nongriat (near Sohra) and came back together (from the living root bridge) and proceeded towards Weisawdong Falls. It was at the parking lot of this place where the three assailants hacked Raja (on May 23). Sonam was present at the scene. Following the murder the body was thrown into a gorge,” said the SP.

The entire murder and disposing of the body happened between 2 pm and 2:18 pm, when the three killers and Sonam left the crime scene. Sonam gave the raincoat she was wearing to Akash because his shirt had a blood stain. All four left in three scooters (two rented by the killers and one by Raja and Sonam). Sonam drove one of the scooters herself.

Police said that at AD Viewpoint, they got down and Akash threw away the raincoat, which also had bloodstains (it was later found by the police on June 4 two days after Raja’s body was found at Weisawdong Falls around 4 km away). After disposing of the raincoat, Akash drove the scooter with Sonam in the backseat. Anand Kurmi drove the scooter which Raja and Sonam had hired and left it at Sohrarim where police found it on May 24.

Soon afterwards, Sonam boarded a taxi and Vishal Chauhan gave her a burqa, which Raj had given to him to pass on to her. Sonam wore the burqa and reached Shillong in that taxi and took another one from there to go to Guwahati. At the ISBT at Lokhra in Guwahati she boarded a bus and reached Siliguri (in West Bengal), boarded another bus there and reached Patna.

“From there she took another bus to Arrah and from there took a train to Lucknow. From Lucknow she took a bus to Indore. When the accused came to know (through media reports) that Meghalaya Police have profiled three suspects in Raja’s killing, Raj asked Sonam to leave Indore and resurface in Siliguri (West Bengal) as a victim of abduction,” said Syiem.

But when Sonam was leaving Indore on June 8, the two police teams from Meghalaya were already in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Police said that when the first arrest (of Akash) was made at Lalitpur in UP on that day, Raj got the information that some people (UP and Meghalaya policemen in plain clothes) had abducted Akash.

“Raj panicked and called Sonam and asked her to call her family in Indore from wherever she was at that time and tell them that she had just escaped from an abduction. That’s why Sonam appeared at a tea shop in Ghazipur in UP in the early hours of June 9 and was later taken into custody by the police,” said Syiem.