NEW DELHI: Supreme Court Thursday said “inadequate communication” of grounds of arrest to an accused would not automatically vitiate the arrest and quashed the bail granted by the Meghalaya high court to Sonam Raghuvanshi, who is facing trial for killing her husband during their honeymoon in the north-eastern state in May 2025. It directed her to surrender within three weeks.Rejecting her plea that she was not furnished grounds of arrest, which is mandatory, a bench of Justices M M Sundresh and P B Varale differentiated between complete non-service of grounds of arrest and inadequate communication of grounds of arrest, and said while the former would vitiate an arrest, in the latter case, the court has to examine whether prejudice was caused to the accused.Meghalaya HC granted Raghuvanshi bail on her fourth attempt on the ground that arrest documents mentioned the non-existent Section 403(1) of BNS instead of Section 103(1). Quashing the order, the apex court said non-furnishing of grounds of arrest could not be cited at a belated stage when regular bail plea was rejected on merit.The bench admitted that it was a tough decision to cancel the bail but said it had to be done as Raghuvanshi’s continued enlargement at this stage might hinder trial in the case. The court allowed her to file a fresh bail plea after six months.The court noted that Raghuvanshi had expressed satisfaction regarding the reasons for her arrest. “As recorded earlier, the respondent expressed satisfaction on the reasons behind her arrest. Therefore, we are not inclined to go into the issue as to whether the case involves surrender or arrest followed by production before the court. Suffice it to state that both the courts committed an error in granting bail on the basis of the judgment rendered by this court,” the bench said. It said the SC had ruled for furnishing written grounds of arrest on Nov 6, 2025, but she was arrested on June 9, 2025, before the judgment was delivered.Challenging the HC’s order, solicitor general Tushar Mehta and the state’s advocate general Amit Kumar pleaded that Raghuvanshi was wrongly granted bail and released on technical grounds of typographical error as the police had erroneously referred to Section 403(1) BNS instead of Section 103(1) BNS (punishment for murder).
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