The investigation into Ketan Agarwal’s death at Lohagad Fort has taken an unexpected turn, with sources now claiming that the woman at the centre of the case, Siya Goyal, had quietly tied the knot with her boyfriend, Chetan Chaudhary, well before she was due to marry Agarwal.
Sources close to the probe told NDTV that Goyal and Chaudhary are thought to have registered their marriage roughly four months ago, even though she had already got engaged to Agarwal in February. Agarwal, a 25-year-old realtor from Pune, was due to marry Goyal this coming November.
The case first made headlines after Agarwal fell to his death from a cliff at Lohagad Fort on 18 June. Investigators believe the fall was no accident, suspecting instead that it was the outcome of a plan Goyal allegedly set in motion because she had no wish to go through with the arranged wedding.
Officers are now working to establish whether the marriage between Goyal and Chaudhary was formally registered under the Special Marriage Act, since a genuine certificate could prove pivotal to the case. Two of Goyal’s college friends, believed to have acted as witnesses when the marriage was registered, have also been brought in for questioning.
Detectives are separately trying to recover deleted images from a private Instagram account said to show the pair dressed in wedding garlands, hoping the photographs might shed further light on the relationship’s timeline.
The alleged plot is said to have gathered urgency once Agarwal’s family began asking Goyal for the paperwork needed to organise their destination wedding in Udaipur. Investigators are also going through Chaudhary’s bank records to see whether money changed hands to get around the notice period ordinarily required under the Special Marriage Act. Both Goyal and Chaudhary continue to be held in judicial custody.
Agarwal and Goyal had originally been brought together through a family match, becoming engaged earlier this year. Police allege that Chaudhary trailed the couple to Lohagad Fort on the day Agarwal died, as part of what they describe as a premeditated conspiracy.
As the investigation progresses, officers say they have found search histories, deleted messages and other digital traces pointing to careful planning in the run-up to Agarwal’s death. According to investigators, Goyal and Chaudhary had looked up different methods online, on both Google and YouTube, before settling on pushing him from the fort as the simplest option.
In her statements to police, Goyal has reportedly admitted she never wanted to marry Agarwal, and claimed she went along with the plan to kill him because she feared that calling off the wedding would bring shame on her family.
