Part I: The Lohagad Fort murder case
Sonam Raghuvanshi (25) was in love with Raj Singh Kushwaha. But her parents, aware of this relationship, did not approve, and forced her to get married to Raja Raghuvanshi (29). Allegedly, she had warned her parents that there would be consequences. True to her diabolical word, while on a trek in Shillong, she hired three hitmen to push her husband into a gorge and eliminate him. Sonam and her lover subsequently disappeared for a few days, before the police caught up with them.

Investigators believe that Siya and Chetan did study the Honeymoon Murder case, and learnt from the mistakes that were committed, and built stronger alibis (which you will read about, in this article). Prima-facie, this looks like a copycat murder.

But in both cases, all of us have asked this simple question… Wouldn’t it have been easier for Sonam and Siya to just confess to their parents and tell them they did not want to get married?

According to Siya, it was easier to kill Ketan than to hurt her parents' feelings... blood was thicker than water, even though 1 crore had been extracted from Ketan.

And so the investigations began as soon as Ketan’s father raised the alarm. What unfolded was the devilish, cold-blooded planning and execution of an innocent man orchestrated by two selfish, despicable lovers: Siya and Chetan.

Apparently, when Siya first suggested that they eliminate Ketan, her lover Chetan had suggested that instead of murdering him, they should elope. She rejected the idea.

Siya came from an affluent family and was a pampered child. Academics took a backseat, as partying, fun, travels, and clubbing were given priority in her privileged life. And so running away would mean being disinherited by her parents and losing all access to the finer things in life, including money. So in her warped, selfish, entitled mind of hers, it was easier to kill Ketan than to hurt her parents or, in reality, lose access to the good life.

But at this point in the story, the police were not aware of Chetan Choudhury.

So let’s go back to the events that would open up the can of worms.

After the ‘accident’, when Siya came to Ketan’s home, she appeared grief-stricken, wept profusely, yet remained oddly evasive. The family still could not comprehend how an experienced trekker like Ketan could just lose his footing so easily.

It was Sanjana (Ketan’s sister) who had earlier followed the Sonam Raghuvanshi case quite closely, who first noticed the similarities in both cases. So, she got to work. She began questioning Siya about the exact details, the precise manner in which the accident had occurred. The cracks began to appear.

Sanjana kept asking Siya to explain where they were standing exactly... What had happened just before Ketan fell... How had he slipped... Which foot had slipped first?

Siya, unable to avoid conversation and finding herself in a corner, began answering the questions. Except, Sanjana noticed tiny details were being changed with each retelling. This could mean only one thing. She was lying. Sanjana alerted her father about Siya’s mismatched narratives. Ketan's father approached the police again and requested a more thorough investigation.

The first thing that the police looked at, was the CCTV footage of the entrance and the ticket counter of Lohagad Fort. The footage clearly showed Ketan and Siya together. But on reviewing the footage, the police asked the operator to stop.

In most of the cameras, a man wearing a hoodie was seen near the couple. At times he was ahead of them, while sometimes he was walking behind them. The strange phenomenon was that the man was wearing a thick hoodie and a face mask, in the scorching heat of June! And it was pulled so low over his face, it seemed deliberately done to hide his identity.

Investigators examined Siya's call detail records, phone data, and digital communications.

The findings were startling. The call records revealed over 2,000 calls and nearly 225 hours of conversations with Chetan Choudhury over several months. Now, investigators suspected the hooded man captured on CCTV was Chetan.

Late on the night of 22nd June 2026, police arrived at Chetan's residence and took him into custody. He was questioned throughout the night.

Chetan’s interrogation gave insight about him and his relationship with Siya. Chetan was a graduate who lived a short distance from Siya’s house. His father owned a dry fruit business.

In 2024, it was Sahil (Siya’s brother) who first befriended Chetan during a cricket match. It was only in 2025, during a Diwali party, that Sahil introduced his sister to Chetan. The two of them became close.

Investigators also discovered that in December 2025, Chetan and Siya had travelled to Jodhpur, where they stayed together for two days at a 5-star hotel. Chetan, who hailed from Palasni village in Jodhpur District, wanted to show her, his roots.

Although, currently as of 1st July 2026, Siya’s parents are denying having any knowledge about Chetan and Siya’s affair, my gut tells me otherwise.

My own hypothesis is that the marriage was arranged after Siya's parents discovered her relationship with Chetan, hoping marriage would end the affair. Instead, investigators believe Siya came to view Ketan not as a husband but as an obstacle.

Ketan lived in a joint family of 20 people, which meant that Siya would have to share responsibilities and lead a traditional life. For a party lover and young girl like Siya, this was utter anathema! The police think that she began looking at this as a gilded cage. And so murdering Ketan was not just the removal of an impediment but also revenge against her parents… much like Sonam Raghuvanshi.

So in February 2026 when Siya got engaged to Ketan, the story took a turn for the worse. The affair continued with Chetan, behind Ketan’s back. In May 2006, Siya even took Chetan to Udaipur—the city where her destination wedding was supposed to take place. It was a brazen revolt on Siya’s part.

Chetan’s childhood friends later revealed to the media that the couple was secretly planning to get married and permanently relocate to either Jodhpur or Udaipur. Chetan told his friends that they would build a life in Rajasthan and that Siya would arrange the necessary finances for the move.

Was this the one crore rupees that Siya had taken from Ketan and transferred to her lover? Was it part of their modus operandi and larger plan to settle down once the dust settled?

On 23rd June 2026, Siya was picked up for questioning. And that is when they turned against each other and the truth gradually started emerging. This was exactly how Dikshant Kamra, Lakhsya Walia, and Priya Seth had turned against each other in the Jaipur Tinder murder case, and the truth had emerged.

Siya herself admitted during interrogation that her parents had known all along. In fact a video of hers on Instagram showed her drinking alcohol with her brother!

So were the Mittals instructed to cover up Siya’s misdoings and present her as the ideal bahu-to-be? In fact, the Goyals did not inform the Agarwals that Siya was 12th fail, and that she consumed alcohol!

And when the cops pressed harder, the canaries began singing, and this is what emerged.

Police allege that after the engagement, Siya began searching on the internet for how to kill someone to make it appear like an accident. And Lohagad Fort was one of the destinations that she had researched.

On 31st May, Siya and Ketan visited the fort, and that is when she observed him, and did a mental recce of the place. They were scheduled to travel to Bali for their pre-wedding photoshoot on the 7th of June. But Siya wanted to kill him before that. She wanted to end the charade. And so she asked Ketan to take her to the fort again on the 5th of June. It was Ketan’s mother who prevented them from going, and Ketan got a lease on life.

So when this plan failed, she was reluctant to travel to Bali, and her brother, who was aware of her affair with Chetan, had to force her to get into the taxi. And it was here that she hatched and executed the plan of destroying Ketan’s passport so that the trip was cancelled.

Siya had repeatedly asked Chetan to participate in the plan, but he had been busy with work commitments. And so frustrated and impatient, Siya decided that if necessary, she would carry out the killing herself. And this is when she asked to go to Lohagad Fort on 15th June and tried to kill him. This was the incident where she pretended to have saved him from a snake.

Siya realized that she would not be able to pull this off on her own and so once again asked Chetan to be more actively involved.

And so the both of them went to a cliff on a hill in Pune’s Lulla Nagar in Sector 37 and practiced how they would shove Ketan off the cliff at Lohagad.

Now that the killing was definitely going to take place, Siya and Chetan put their heads together to figure out how not to leave a digital trail and, secondly, how to befuddle the police if they were questioned.

Police allege Chetan meticulously built an alibi. He left his phone at his workplace, switched off its internet, travelled by scooter to avoid toll-plaza cameras, and carried an employee's phone to communicate with Siya. The alleged objective was simple: if police traced his own phone, they would conclude he had never left Market Yard.

Secondly, he decided to travel to the fort on his scooter instead of his car. Because the latter would have required him to stop at the toll plaza. And that would mean exposing himself to the numerous CCTV cameras present there.

And Chetan carried a phone that belonged to his employee to the fort so that he could communicate with Siya, and when cops would get the Call Dump Records it would be the employee’s number that would show up at the fort!

The police were shocked at the preparedness with which the two of them had masterminded the killing.

The interrogation also revealed that the lovers had met a day earlier at a café. The CCTV footage was pulled. The lovers could be seen chatting like any ordinary couple. Except they were casually planning the dastardly act of taking someone’s life the very next day!

The exact place from where they would push Ketan was decided. And the police were astounded to hear Siya confess about a secret code/gesture that she would signal to Chetan for him to execute the plan. Siya decided that she would tell Ketan to turn around and look outwards, and with his back to her, she would sit down on the ground to take a photo. This ‘sitting down’ would be the signal for Chetan to rush and push Ketan off into the gorge.

The cyberteam uncovered a call between Siya and Chetan (on his decoy phone) exactly 34 minutes before Ketan Agrawal was pushed off the cliff. Siya had dialled Chetan while she was actively hiking up Lohagad Fort with Ketan. Chetan was already on the fort premises, quietly tailing them from a distance while disguised in the thick hoodie.

According to police investigators and recovered digital trails, this conversation was used to coordinate the final strike. Siya gave Chetan her exact real-time viewpoint location on the fort. She confirmed to Chetan that the specific spot near the Vinchukada ridge was currently clear and that no other tourists were around to witness the crime. They also used this call to double-check their code words and the pre-arranged "sit-down" kill signal.

Although the final act was not captured on CCTV cameras, the cops noticed Chetan, wearing his hoodie and following the couple, and Siya occasionally secretly signaling towards Chetan with her hands to slow down or move ahead of them.

And then at the designated spot, Siya went through with the plan. She asked Ketan to look towards the valley, and she sat down. Chetan, who had been loitering around the Mahadev Temple near the location, rushed and completed the murder.

Another scene was revealed via the CCTV footage. When Chetan arrived at the entry gate of the fort, the security guard asked him about his entry ticket. Chetan gave the excuse of just going in for a few minutes to do his exercise and would purchase the ticket when he exited. The callous security guards allowed him to enter.

The police realized that Chetan did not purchase a ticket because the CCTV camera mounted directly above the ticket counter would almost certainly have captured a clear image of his face, thus nailing him at the scene of crime.

Immediately after the final call between Chetan and Siya and the subsequent execution of the murder, both of them ‘wiped’ their devices. They deleted three months of WhatsApp backups, Instagram direct messages, photos, recycle bins, and audio voice notes to ensure the police would find no trace of coordination. Such was their clever planning! The cyber wing of the police is currently using forensic extraction tools to pull these deleted conversations back to life, matching the recovered text timelines with the exact timestamp of this final call to prove "premeditated murder" in court.

As the interrogation progressed and Siya was asked about the motive behind the killing, she said that Ketan wore a hair patch and stammered while he spoke... both of which were embarrassing to her! The cops brushed it away, reminding her that all of this was well-known to her even before the engagement. If she was so concerned, she should not have agreed to get engaged!

Another red flag for the police was that Siya’s phone was completely empty of photos from a trip that she claimed was meant to celebrate her birthday and pose for pictures.

Police later recreated the crime at both Lohagad Fort and a cliff in Lulla Nagar, where the couple allegedly rehearsed the push using a dummy. Investigators say the exercise reinforced evidence of careful premeditation rather than a spontaneous act.

Another revelation took place: the duo had visited Lohagad Fort alone before the murder. They used online videos to study the layout of the fort, then visited and identified the specific, secluded cliff near the Vinchukada ridge where the push would be most lethal and easily hidden from immediate view.

The "rehearsal" phase of the crime revealed that the murder of Ketan Agrawal was a highly premeditated, step-by-step conspiracy rather than a crime of passion / sudden action.

Meanwhile, Siya’s parents kept insisting that they were not aware of Chetan and Siya’s romantic involvement. And then came a Snapchat video that was shot weeks prior, but at the same café where they met a day before the murder. In the clip, Siya and Chetan share an intimate hug. This heavily damaged the claim made by her parents that Chetan was just a friend.

This incident was followed by another ‘leaked’ video that originated from a local cricket league called the Market Yard Friends Cricket League (MFCL) held in Pune. In the video, Siya and Chetan can be seen seated beside each other, wearing Indian cricket team jerseys, and Siya resting her head on Chetan’s shoulder. Needless to say, the clip went viral!

Chetan’s lawyer raised the question that it was not Chetan who was following the couple at the fort... after all, his face was not visible under the hoodie. It could be anybody! That is when the police decided to use Gait Analysis, which is the scientific study of a person's unique walking style. Pune Police recreated Chetan's movements at Lohagad Fort. Wearing the same clothes, he walked the identical route while forensic experts recorded his gait. AI software is now comparing his stride length, posture, hip movement and shoulder sway with the CCTV footage. Investigators believe a positive match would scientifically place him at the crime scene.

On 5th July 2026, the Pune Police recovered the deleted chats between Chetan and Siya’s Snapchat, and another incriminating evidence was found. A message dated 25th May from Siya asking Chetan: ‘Adhar card front back bhejde for wedding tickets jo hone nai wali parr fir bhi bhej de’ (Send both sides of your adhar card to book flight tickets for the wedding which will not happen, but send anyways). To which Chetan sent the details to her whatsapp account.

The case also raises uncomfortable questions about violence against men. The NCRB maintains no dedicated category for crimes against male intimate partners, making it difficult to quantify such cases.

Independent journalist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj argues that this leaves many victims statistically invisible.

"The Ketan Agarwal murder has made headlines, but we come across multiple such cases on a daily basis. As the national crime documenting agency NCRB does not have any data on crimes committed against men by intimate partners, my organization, Ekam Nyaay Foundation, records such incidents that we can gather from news outlets. Until June 2026, more than 300 men have been murdered by their wives or girlfriends, extramarital affairs being the reason in 95% of cases. One can draw a comparison if, in any case of a heinous crime against a woman, highlighted by the media, the male accused has been granted bail within months. I am sure, but not so much. But whether it is the Atul Subhash case, where Nikita Singhania got bail within 19 days, or the Raja Raghuvanshi case, where Sonam got bail within 11 months, the judiciary has been overtly sympathetic to women accused of serious crimes," she says.

"Sonam's accomplice, her lover, is still in jail while she's out giving media interviews. Siya confidently displays her middle finger to the media, as if she believes that once her case reaches court, she will be released swiftly. Men are dying by suicide due to torture by their wives and being murdered by their partners and their lovers, but none of these cases become statistics enough for anyone to care. Parents of men are increasingly becoming hopeless because their sons are not just becoming victims of the opposite gender but also a society and system that are stacked against them, refusing to believe that they can be victims too. Mainstream media has published articles that absolve Siya Goyal of any responsibility for this murder, attributing it to everything except her sociopathic behavior. Writers like Shobhaa De have written a funny article around this murder, blaming Ketan's wig for his murder! Are men so disposable in this era of women empowerment that their lives do not matter at all? I hope our country opens its eyes to the sufferings of men too," Deepika further adds.

Disturbingly, the cliff has since become a social-media attraction with 25% more footfalls all eager to see "Siya Point", drawing influencers and curiosity seekers, who now ask the local guides – ‘bhaiya, yeh Siya Point kahan hai?’ Historians and conservationists have condemned the trivialisation of a millennium-old fort into a backdrop for viral content. Humanity has taken a back-seat!

The tragedy surrounding the Lohagad Fort death has deepened for the Agarwal family. On 4th July, 2026, 83-year-old Devichand Agarwal, paternal grandfather of Ketan Agarwal, passed away at a private hospital in Pune after battling recurring health issues following a major heart surgery.

Family members say Ketan's death had left him devastated. Despite his frail health, he attended the June 27th candlelight march at Lodha Belmondo in Gahunje, demanding justice for his grandson.

As of 8th July 2026, the police revealed that Siya and Chetan were married after her engagement with Ketan; four months prior to the killing. This has been revealed by the cops studying their whatsapp chats, and are now trying to get hold of the marriage certificate, and recover a private Instagram account in which Siya and Chetan are allegedly wearing marriage garlands. The police are also speaking with two friends who had signed as witnesses on that day.

The investigation continues. The Pune Police plan to conduct a polygraph test on the two main accused. Siya, perhaps confident that she too will get a bail like Sonam, showed a middle finger to the press and cameras… much like Priya Seth has threatened to break the video cameras that were filming her interview!

Here is hoping that Ketan Agarwal finds justice and his soul finds peace. And as humanity, we find restraint and decorum. Till now, both Siya Goyal and Chetan Chaudhary have not expressed regret for the killing of Ketan Agarwal.

The author is a bestselling true crime author and creator-producer of the hit TV shows Savdhaan India & Ishq Kills and producer of Crime Patrol and Fear Files. To read more stories from Anirban, click HERE