A team of the Meghalaya Police got a transit remand of the four accused in the Raja Raghuvanshi murder case from a court in Indore to take them to Meghalaya for further interrogations.

On Tuesday, the police produced Anand Kurmi – the fourth accused arrested from Basahari village in Bina, Madhya Pradesh – in an Indore court, which approved his transit custody till 16 June and handed him to the Meghalaya Police.

Advertisement

Earlier on Monday evening, three accused – Raj Kushwaha, Vishal Chauhan, and Akash Rajput – were presented before Chief Judicial Magistrate Shashank Singh in Indore. The court granted a seven-day remand for them.

Indore Crime Branch DCP Rajesh Dandotia said that the Meghalaya Police would take all the four accused with them on the basis of the transit custody.

On Tuesday morning, a team of the Meghalaya Police, assisted by the MP Police, reached the house of accused Vishal Chauhan in the Nandbagh area of Indore. As the door was locked, and the police did not have the key, the cops climbed over the gate to enter the house before carrying out a search operation.

Indore Crime Branch ACP Poonam Chand Yadav, who also arrived at Vishal’s house, said that the police conducted a search in connection with Raja Raghuvanshi’s murder case.

Sources said that the police teams recovered a pair of jeans and a shirt, reportedly worn by Vishal while allegedly killing Raja Raghuvanshi. The police will send the clothes for forensic examination. They also said that all the accused used to meet often at a ground located in Scheme No.155 area of Indore.

The accused were using new mobiles and SIM cards, the sources added. According to them, Sonam had come to Indore by train from Shillong via Siliguri on May 25 after her husband’s murder.

In Indore, she met her reported lover, Raj Kushwaha, and stayed in his rented room. A driver dropped her in Varanasi, from where she reached Ghazipur. However, the police said they have not yet found any information corroborating this. According to ACP Yadav, the police have not yet found any evidence of Sonam coming to Indore after the murder.

Raja Raghuvanshi and Sonam, both from Indore, got married on 11 May. They reached Shillong in Meghalaya on their honeymoon on 20 May before going missing on 23 May. Raja’s body was found in a deep gorge near a waterfall in the Sohra (Cherrapunji) area on 2 June.

The Meghalaya police registered a case of murder and launched investigations.

In the wee hours of 9 June, Sonam was located at a dhaba at Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. She was initially detained before being arrested subsequently on suspicion of being the mastermind in her husband’s murder case.

Following that, four more accused, including three suspected hired killers, were arrested from Indore and Bina in Madhya Pradesh, while another suspect was nabbed from Uttar Pradesh.