‘Chetan masterminded Ketan Agarwal’s murder to stop his marriage to Siya’

Pune: As new details emerge in the Ketan Agarwal murder case, sources connected with the matter revealed that the accused Chetan Chaudhary, along with his alleged lover and the victim’s fiancee Siya Goyal, purportedly “masterminded” the murder in order to stop the arranged marriage.

The FIR filed by Ketan’s father, Vishal Devichand Agarwal, has reportedly alleged that both Chetan and Siya pushed his son off a cliff to his death, near Pune’s Lohagad fort.

According to reports, a major point of contention was a missed trip to Lohagad fort on June 4, which apparently made Siya highly agitated and persistently demanded that her fiance take her there.

As per the detailed timeline of the murder conspiracy shared by sources from the day of the alleged crime, Chetan reportedly disabled his mobile data to stop cell towers from creating a geographic GPS trail of his route to the crime scene at around 7 am.

An hour later, with the aim of misleading investigators into believing he never left his shop, he left his personal smartphone at his workplace and ordered his workers to answer all incoming calls.

Around noon, he attempted to cover his tracks by borrowing an employee’s mobile phone to handle necessary communications on his way to Lohagad fort.

At 2 pm, while aiming to conceal his identity from security guards at the historical place, Chetan shadowed Ketan and Siya up the fort trail while wrapped in a thick winter hoodie despite the sweltering 33 degrees Celsius summer heat. This detail later led investigators to suspect him.

Around half an hour later, upon reaching a secluded cliff near the Vinchu Kata ridge, Siya sat down as an alleged visual cue to her co-accused. Chetan then reportedly stepped out from hiding and pushed Ketan 400 feet to his death.

After staying entirely off the digital grid for 10 hours and 40 minutes, Chetan switched on his internet at around 5.40 pm, confident that his calculated location cover-up was flawless.

However, the plan backfired as investigators flagged Chetan’s prolonged offline period while tracing his distinct winter attire on CCTV footage. They also confirmed with callers that someone else was answering his phone.

Ketan left home on the morning of June 18, picked up Siya from the Kiwale bridge on the Pune-Mumbai highway, and finally headed to the fort. At 10.45 am, Siya Goyal called her fiancé’s mother, claiming that he had accidentally fallen into a gorge at Lohagad Fort. Locals and the police found him in the gorge and took him to the hospital, where the doctors declared him dead.

The family alleged that Siya’s phone was constantly busy and that she frequently mentioned her “friend” Chetan, leading them to believe the two were involved in a romantic relationship.

Earlier, the police investigation revealed that Siya may have killed her fiancé to get “three years of freedom”.

According to sources, Siya’s lover, Chetan, had asked her to wait for at least three years for them to get married as he wanted to settle in his career. But Siya’s wedding to Ketan had already been arranged and scheduled for November.

The two then pushed Ketan into a valley at the Lohagad Fort near Maharashtra’s Pune as a part of the conspiracy that let them “buy time”, sources said.

IANS