O
n the morning of June 18, at the ancient Lohagad Fort perched in the hills near Pune, Ketan Agarwal, a 26-year-old businessman and avid trekker, fell to his death into a 400-foot gorge. His fiancée, Siya Goyal, called the police and told them he had slipped while trying to take photographs, undone by the strong winds that day. It seemed, on the surface, like a terrible accident.
But it wasn't.
In the days that followed, as investigators peeled back the story layer by layer, what emerged was something far more calculated: a murder that had been planned over weeks, rehearsed twice, and finally carried out by the woman Ketan was set to marry — and the man she actually loved.
Siya Goyal and her boyfriend Chetan Chaudhary were arrested on Tuesday. Police allege the two conspired to kill Ketan by pushing him off the cliff, making it look like an accident.
The case has since gripped India, not just for its cinematic brutality but also for the devastating statement that followed from the most unexpected source—Siya's own father.
Praveen Goyal, Siya's father, told India Today TV that the shock of her arrest had landed him in the intensive care unit. And yet, even from his hospital bed, he did not flinch. "If my daughter is found guilty, the court should not delay justice. She should be given the same punishment," he said. "I still find it impossible to believe my daughter could do something like this. But my emotions as a father will not come in the way of justice."
The implication was clear and raw. If she pushed him from a fort, justice should look the same.
It is the kind of statement that stops you. A father publicly demanding the harshest possible reckoning for his own child, speaking through grief and disbelief, from an ICU. Whatever the courts ultimately decide, that moment alone speaks to how severely this case has fractured everything around it.
According to police, the murder did not happen in a moment of passion. It was methodical, with multiple failed attempts before the final one succeeded.
Police say Siya first conceived the plan on May 31, during a trek to Lohagad Fort with Ketan. She decided then, in coordination with Chetan, that if Agarwal was pushed from the fort, it could be made to look like an accident. She convinced him to return on June 4, but Ketan's family told him not to go. She tried again on June 14 — this time Ketan came, but when he nearly fell, she screamed about seeing a snake and hugged him, pulling back to avoid suspicion. Ketan did not realize what had nearly happened.
Chetan then told Siya to try once more on June 18. This time, it worked. Ketan was pushed into the gorge and died.
On the day itself, police say the two allegedly met Ketan at the fort, struck him with an object, and threw him from the top. After it was done, Siya called emergency services and told them her fiancé had slipped.
Ketan's father, Vishal Agarwal, was among the first to raise doubts. He told police his son was an experienced trekker, not someone who would simply slip and fall. The family filed a formal complaint. And then the investigators found something odd on the CCTV footage.
A man was seen trailing Ketan and Siya around the fort. He was wearing a hoodie and had his face covered on a morning when the temperature was 33 degrees Celsius. His suspicious movements and oddly heavy clothing stood out enough to prompt police to dig deeper. The man turned out to be Chetan Chaudhary.
Further investigation revealed that in the six months before the murder, Siya and Chetan had been in near-constant contact—exchanging over 2,000 phone calls and spending 238 hours on the phone with each other. On the morning of June 18, the two allegedly met at a café, finalized the plan, and even identified the precise spot on the fort from where Ketan would be pushed.
Police also found that Siya had sabotaged a pre-wedding trip to Bali on June 6 by deliberately misplacing Ketan's passport at a food mall near Mumbai, dumping it in a women's washroom. The Bali trip, meant for a photoshoot, had to be called off when his passport couldn't be found at the airport.
According to her own interrogation, Siya had told her family repeatedly that she did not want to marry Ketan. They did not listen. She also reportedly told police she saw Ketan as an obstacle between her and Chetan.
The Agarwal family had known the Goyals for over three decades. Ketan's father, Vishal, told reporters that the Goyal family—including Siya's mother, brother, and aunt—were aware of her relationship with Chetan but pushed ahead with the engagement regardless, believing the Agarwals to be a more suitable match. "Had they allowed her to marry as per her wish, my son would be alive," he said. "I don't know why she had to kill my son. She could have just said no. Or spoken to us."
A cop stationed at the fort at the time of the incident told Zee News that when he informed Siya of Ketan's condition after the fall, she showed no remorse. No tears. Just agitation.
A magistrate's court in Pune has sent both Siya Goyal and Chetan Chaudhary to police custody until June 29. Lonavala Rural Police have registered a murder case against them both. The investigation is ongoing, and police have indicated they may look into whether anyone else was involved.
The case touches something uncomfortable about the intersection of family pressure, arranged marriages, and what happens when young people feel entirely trapped. None of that, of course, is a justification for what police allege happened on that hillside. But it is part of the story—one that Ketan's father himself seems to understand, even as he grieves.
Lohagad Fort has stood for centuries, watching over the valleys of Maharashtra. On June 18, it became a crime scene. And in the weeks since, it has become a symbol of something harder to name—the collapse of trust between families who thought they knew each other and the devastating cost of not listening.
