The Supreme Court on Friday refused to stay a Meghalaya High Court order granting bail to Sonam Raghuvanshi, accused of killing her husband Raja Raghuvanshi during their honeymoon in the northeastern state last year.

A bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Sheel Nagu expressed reservations over the high court order but refused to stay it.

“Prima facie we have reservations about the high court judgment… but for the fact she has been released, we would have stayed the order…” the bench observed during the hearing.

The bench also issued formal notice to Sonam for her response to the Meghalaya government’s appeal challenging the trial court’s decision to grant her bail on technical grounds and the high court’s refusal to interfere with the trial court’s decision.

Solicitor-general Tushar Mehta made a vain attempt to seek cancellation of the bail and cited the recent case of Pune realtor Ketan Agarwal, who was allegedly pushed to death by his fiancée Siya Goyal and her alleged lover Chetan Chaudhary from Lohagad Fort.

Mehta submitted that Raja Raghuvanshi’s murder case would shock the conscience of the court, prompting Justice Sundresh, heading the bench, to remark that “it is for the different stakeholders to do some introspection” and cited a recent judgment by the Supreme Court in a “sensational” case from Bangalore, but did not elaborate.

Justice Sundresh questioned what prevented the state from subsequently arresting her if the trial court had granted her bail due to some typographical errors made by the investigating agency (Meghalaya police).

Mehta told the bench that Raja’s murder was premeditated by Sonam and her boyfriend along with two others who killed the victim and flung his body down the gorge.

Mehta submitted that the trial judge had rejected Sonam’s bail plea twice, but she was granted bail on her third plea. He noted that the investigating agency committed a clerical mistake in the arrest documents by repeatedly citing Section 403 of the BNS instead of Section 103 of the BNS (punishment for murder). The BNS doesn’t have Section 403.

He pointed out that even during Sonam’s transit remand, the judicial magistrate concerned had recorded that she was provided with the grounds of arrest, memo of arrest and other documents. Yet, the typographical error prompted the trial court to allow her bail plea, which stated that no proper grounds of arrest were served on her.

During the hearing, Justice Sundresh also asked Sonam’s counsel how the defence could raise the question of non-supply of grounds of arrest as a reason for bail in the third bail application when no such plea was raised in the two earlier ones.

Sonam’s counsel had also submitted that the trial court had imposed strict bail conditions, which meant that she would have to remain in Shillong, and hence, there was no likelihood of her absconding.

The bench noted that the accused had already been released and expressed its reluctance to stay the bail order.

The Meghalaya government moved the Supreme Court on Thursday against the bail granted to Sonam, the prime accused in the case.

Raja’s family members on Friday reiterated their demand for a CBI probe.

Talking to PTI in Indore, Raja’s elder brother, Vipin Raghuvanshi, said: “An order for a CBI investigation is immediately issued upon the death of a child of an influential person, but although it has been more than a year since my brother Raja was murdered, the government has not yet ordered a CBI investigation into the case.”

Vipin, who had previously questioned the prosecution’s handling of the case, claimed that had the CBI been entrusted with the investigation from the outset, Sonam would not have had the opportunity to exploit the legal lapses of the current investigating agency in court.