Ketan Agarwal’s death, which was initially reported as an accident, took a frightening turn as the investigation found that he was pushed by his fiancée Siya Goyal.
Ketan Vishal Agarwal, a 25-year-old Maharashtrian real estate company heir in Pune, allegedly survived a murder attempt by his fiancée days before he was pushed to his death from Lohagad Fort near Lonavala on June 18 – an incident that was first reported as an accidental death, but took a shocking turn as a murder investigation after the accused confessed.
Ketan Agarwal, director of family-run real estate firm Success Group and resident of Lodha Belmondo in Gahunje in Pune, visited Lohagad Fort on June 18 with his fiancée Siya Goyal as part of her birthday celebrations. Sia initially told police that Ketan slipped and fell while taking photos near the fort.
An accidental death report was initially registered, but the case took a dramatic turn after police arrested the victim’s fiancé and boyfriend, Chetan Chaudhary, on suspicion of murder on Tuesday.
Ketan’s family alleged that his fiancée Siya Goyal, whom they said was never under suspicion, had displayed some red flags in the run-up to the murder, citing a previous push during a trip to Lohagad itself which they inferred as her trying to save him from a snake. Several other incidents before the alleged murder which included an aborted Bali trip and Sia’s insistence on going on a trip to Lohagad again strengthened the Ketan family’s suspicions of her role in the murder along with Chetan Chaudhary.
Ketan Agarwal was a regular commuter in Lohagad and was well acquainted with the terrain, an earlier HT report quoted Pune Rural Police Superintendent Sandeep Singh Gill as saying. In their statement, the Agarwal family also raised some doubts about Sia, following which the police examined her phone and looked into other forensic details. It soon came to light that she and Chetan Chaudhary were in a relationship for more than a year, and they tried in many ways to express her reluctance to marry Ketan Agarwal.
Siya Goyal’s first failed murder attempt in Lohagad
The investigation revealed that four days before his death, the couple went on a trip to Lohagad, where Sia allegedly pushed Ketan, claiming that she had spotted a snake and was trying to save him. On June 18, Sia once again insisted on going on a trip before her birthday on June 19.
“Through the call recording data, we were able to find out that Chetan Chaudhary was also in Lohagad at the same time as Ketan and Siya were there,” SP Gill said. He claimed that the accused had confessed to the murder, drawing comparisons with last year’s “honeymoon murder” of Indore resident Raja Raghuvanshi in the forests of Meghalaya.
Ketan Agarwal’s father, Vishal Agarwal, 46, told HT that his son raised concerns about Sia’s behaviour, but the family ignored them.
It also later emerged that the hoodie was crucial evidence for the police to investigate the death as a homicide and clamp down on Chetan. Another HT report quoted Senior Police Inspector Dinesh Tayadi of Lonavla Rural Police as saying, “When we checked the temperature on June 18, it was 33 degrees Celsius that morning. While checking CCTV footage from the hillsides, we noticed a person wearing a jacket with his head covered and also wearing headphones. This raised suspicions as such clothing was unusual considering the weather conditions.”
Police later identified the person as Chetan Chaudhary, who allegedly tried to avoid detection by leaving his mobile phone at his Kondhwa residence instead of carrying it to the fort. Investigators tracked CCTV footage and then interrogated both Chaudhary and Sia. Police said that during ongoing investigations, the two confessed to committing the crime.
‘Siya, Ketan are set up $14 crore wedding
Ketan Agarwal was a director in his family’s company, Success Group, one of the largest warehouse developers in Maharashtra. He returned to Pune in 2023 after earning his master’s degree from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to join the family business.
In February this year, he got engaged to Siya Goyal, 20, with his uncle acting as matchmaker. Goyal also belongs to a wealthy business family in Pune. However, Agarwal’s family was unknown to her, and she was in a relationship with Chetan Chaudhary, 22, whose family runs a business in the same commercial area where Goyal’s father lives.
Agarwal and Goyal were scheduled to get married in November this year, with hotels already booked in Udaipur for the wedding. However, on June 18, Sia allegedly insisted that Ketan Agarwal take her on a picnic to Lohagad Fort as a birthday gift ahead of her 20th birthday the next day. She told him that she would wait near Kewali Bridge on the Pune-Mumbai Expressway.
Police sources told HT that the families are expected to spend a long time $14 crore on the celebrations.
At 10.45 am on June 18, Sia’s mother called the Agarwal family and told them that Ketan had slipped into a gorge in Lohagad while taking pictures. “Initially we registered an accidental death report, but during the investigation, some family details and data made us rethink the investigation,” Pune Rural Police Superintendent Sandeep Singh Gill said.
Suspicions
Apart from the first alleged attempt to push Ketan off the cliff, another suspicious incident occurred earlier this month, when Ketan and Sia were scheduled to fly to Bali for a pre-wedding photo shoot, but the flight was canceled after the couple arrived at the Mumbai airport and discovered that Ketan’s passport was missing. Investigations after his death revealed that Sia had hidden his passport to avoid the trip.
Ketan Agarwal’s father, Vishal Agarwal, told HT, “After the engagement in February, Ketan and Sia met frequently and hung out together. At times, Ketan expressed concerns about Sia, and asked us if we had properly verified her ancestry. But since her family was connected to us through our extended family network, I reassured him that everything was fine.”
Vishal Agarwal said that the couple would often fight over minor issues and that Sia was always on her phone. He said Ketan also mentioned Chetan Chaudhary’s name, raising suspicions about a possible relationship with Sia.
He added: “We thought about postponing the wedding because she was very young, but her parents insisted on going ahead with it because they would not find a partner like my son.”
Sia and Chetan have been booked for murder and conspiracy under Sections 103 and 61 (2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and have been remanded in custody.
