Police in India say a woman, Sonam Raghuvansh who had gone missing after her husband was found brutally murdered during their honeymoon is in custody after she surrendered.
The families of the couple had alleged that the bride had also either been killed or abducted and mounted a huge campaign to find her.
Police now allege that Sonam Raghuvanshi, 25, hired killers to murder her 30-year-old husband Raja during their trip to the tiny north-eastern state of Meghalaya. Four men have also been arrested.
Sonam’s father Devi Singh has defended his daughter saying “she is innocent and she cannot do this”.
The newly-wed couple from Indore city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh had chosen Meghalaya for their honeymoon because they had heard it had “very beautiful valleys”, Raja’s brother Sachin Raghuvanshi told the BBC at the weekend, before Sonam’s arrest.
The couple had married on May11 in Indore in a ceremony blessed by both their families.
“Their marriage was arranged four months back and they were both happy and there had been no fights between the couple before or after marriage,” Raja’s other brother Vipin Raghuvanshi said.
The couple left for Meghalaya on May 20. But four days into their trip, they went missing.
Police and disaster relief teams, accompanied by local people, searched for the couple. Videos from the area showed rescuers rappelling down hills and cliffs in valleys covered in mist. Officials said rain and low visibility were hampering the search operations.
A week later, Raja’s decomposed body was found in a gorge with his throat slit and his wallet, a gold ring and a chain missing. And Sonam had disappeared without a trace.
Their families mounted a huge campaign, accusing the Meghalaya police of not doing enough to solve Raja’s murder or find Sonam – an accusation contested by the state’s chief minister.
The couple’s families demanded that the case be handed over to the federal police for a proper investigation and met influential caste leaders and federal ministers in their home state to lobby for this.
Last Friday, they also wrote a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to deliver justice for Raja and find Sonam.
But on Monday morning, Director General of Meghalaya police Idashisha Nongrang said Sonam had surrendered at a police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district.
Three other suspects, who are also from the couple’s home state Madhya Pradesh, have been arrested in overnight raids, DGP Nongrang said.
“One person was picked up from Uttar Pradesh and another two accused were apprehended from Indore. Sonam surrendered at the Nandganj police station and was subsequently arrested.”
Later, addressing a press conference, Superintendent of Police Vivek Syiem said a fourth man had been arrested in Meghalaya in connection with the case on Monday morning.
He did not give any motive for Raja’s murder but described Sonam “as the main suspect”.
In response to a reporter’s question on “whether Sonam was in an extra-marital relationship with one of the arrested men”, Mr Syeim said “if you join the dots, then it would seem like it”. But he added that these details could be verified only after the two were questioned.
Sonam’s father Devi Singh told ANI news agency that his daughter had reached “a dhaba [roadside eatery] in Ghazipur last night where she borrowed a mobile phone and called her brother – who then called the police”.
Mr Singh said he had not been able to speak to his daughter but he believed that she had “somehow managed to escape her captors” and insisted that she was “innocent”.
Mr Singh also accused the Meghalaya police of “making up stories” and appealed to Home Minister Amit Shah to order a federal inquiry into the case for the truth to come out.
Raja’s brother Vipin Raghuvanshi initially told reporters he would “not accept Sonam’s involvement in the murder until she confessed”.
But he later said that one of the arrested men named by the police worked in Sonam’s office.
“Only Sonam can clarify,” he said. “If she’s guilty, she should be punished.”
Mr Raghuvanshi, who had repeatedly criticised Meghalaya’s police and government for not doing enough to solve the case, also said “I now believe that Meghalaya government was not lying. They were telling the truth”.
On Monday morning, after the news broke, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma complimented his state’s police force, saying that they had achieved a “major breakthrough” in seven days. Another minister, Alexander Laloo Hek, said that the state’s police, government and even ordinary people had been unfairly blamed while the search was going on.
“The truth has come out,” he said.
