High above the mist-shrouded valleys of Maharashtra’s Sahyadri range, the ancient basalt ramparts of Lohagad Fort rise like a sleeping titan. For centuries, this UNESCO-recognized monument of Maratha military genius has drawn trekkers, historians, and tourists seeking its sweeping vistas. But on the morning of June 18, 2026, the mountain air was pierced by a cry that would unravel a fairy-tale life and expose a chilling, calculated crime.

Ketan Vishal Agarwal, a 26-year-old rising star in the Pune real estate sector who had recently returned from completing prestigious postgraduate studies abroad, plunged 400 feet into a sheer, jagged gorge. What was initially reported by his fiancée, 20-year-old commerce student and baker Siya Goyal, as a tragic slip-and-fall while posing for a photograph in fierce winds soon transformed. Beneath the veneer of a high-society romance—complete with plans for a multi-million-dollar royal palace wedding—lay a dark conspiracy of passport sabotage, a secret lover, failed murder attempts, and cold-blooded execution.

This is the chronological reconstruction of the fall of Ketan Agarwal, stripped of its cover-up, layer by layer.

The Courtroom Echoes and a Quest for Justice | Late June 2026 | Shivajinagar District Court, Pune

The mahogany-paneled corridors of the Shivajinagar District Court were thick with tension as police vans arrived under heavy guard. In the dock stood Siya Goyal (20) and her secret lover, Chetan Babulal Chaudhary (22), a resident of Kondhwa. Stripped of the designer attire of Pune’s elite merchant class, the co-conspirators stared at the floor as the prosecution detailed the forensic evidence that justified their extended remand in judicial custody.

For Pune Rural Police Superintendent Sandip Singh Gill and his cyber forensics division, this phase was about cementing a flawless prosecution. Teams analyzed deleted WhatsApp logs, cross-referenced burner-phone signals, and mapped the physical angles of the push off the Lohagad cliff. In response to the tragedy, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and local authorities initiated safety audits, temporarily banning trekking during high-wind alerts and erecting heavy metal barriers near the fort's blind drops.

The defense claimed custody was coercive, but the digital trail was absolute. Confessions were backed by GPS coordinates placing Chaudhary’s phone directly at the mountain base on the day of the plunge, dismantling his original city-based alibi.

The Reclassification and Family Accusations | June 23, 2026 | Pune Rural Police Headquarters

The turning point came when the Lonavala Rural Police officially threw out the Accidental Death Report (AD No. 36/2026). Following a formal complaint filed by the victim’s father, Vishal Agarwal, the police reclassified the case. The charge sheet was redrafted under the stringent provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023: Section 103 for Murder and Section 61 for Criminal Conspiracy.

At a packed press conference, SP Sandip Singh Gill walked reporters through the gruesome reality: this was not a tragic misstep, but a cold-blooded execution.

Outside the briefing room, the emotional toll on the Agarwal family was devastatingly clear. Ketan’s mother broke down, recounting her sense of profound betrayal. "I met her many times," she wept, her voice cracking. "We went shopping and out for dinner together frequently, yet it never crossed our minds that she could be this kind of person. My son is no more... I demand the death penalty for those involved".

Ketan's father, Vishal, went further, explicitly accusing Siya's family of complicity. "I strongly believe that Siya Goyal's parents, brother, and paternal aunt could also be involved, as they knew everything from the very beginning," he stated. He questioned the cruel calculations of the killers: "If she didn't want to get married, she could have simply refused. We would have cancelled the wedding immediately. Why did they decide to take such a drastic step? What kind of mindset do they have?"

A Sister’s Suspicion and the LCB Breakthrough | June 22, 2026 | Lodha Belmondo, Gahunje, and the LCB Facility

The facade began to crack inside the Agarwal family home in the ultra-luxury Lodha Belmondo enclave in Gahunje. Four days after Ketan’s body had been pulled from the gorge, Siya Goyal visited the grieving household. It was meant to be a visit of shared mourning, but Ketan's sister noticed something deeply unsettling: Siya's eyes were dry, her answers about the timeline of the "accident" were evasive, and she exhibited a total lack of the raw, disorienting grief of a woman who had just watched her fiancé fall to his death.

                     [ TAIL OF THE TRAIL: CDR LINK ]

  +-----------------------+                       +-----------------------+
  |    Siya's Phone       | <===================> |    Chetan's Phone     |
  | (Lohagad Fort Tower)  |   Burner Connection   | (Lohagad Fort Tower)  |
  |  Active: 10:15 AM     |                       |  Active: 10:20 AM     |
  +-----------------------+                       +-----------------------+
              \                                               /
               \                                             /
                v                                           v
         +---------------------------------------------------------+
         |             Lohagad Fort Cell Tower Dump                |
         |         Matches physical location of victim             |
         +---------------------------------------------------------+

When the sister began asking detailed questions about the exact sequence of the fall, Siya stumbled over her words. Suspicions raised, the family alerted the Local Crime Branch (LCB).

Simultaneously, the LCB detained Chetan Chaudhary from his residence in the Kondhwa suburb. Chaudhary was highly conscious of digital surveillance. To avoid leaving a GPS trail, he had left his personal mobile phone at his home in Kondhwa. Instead, he took a mobile phone belonging to one of his family's bulk trade shop workers to communicate with Siya on the mountain.

However, investigators successfully ran a cellular tower "dump" and matched the worker's phone coordinates directly to the fort's towers. When detectives presented Chaudhary with this data, he broke down and confessed to the murder, revealing that he and Siya had been using the worker's burner line to coordinate the ambush.

"Wapas Aaja" – Performative Grief on a Digital Screen | June 19–21, 2026 | Gahunje, Pune

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Siya Goyal turned to social media to construct an alibi of devastating loss. On June 19—her 20th birthday—she posted a highly stylized video on her Instagram account. The video, set to a romantic, melancholic track, showed clips of her and Ketan dancing and laughing in the front seat of a car.

Overlaid on the footage was a paragraph of public mourning:

"You left me on my birthday. You left when we were so close to getting married. I still can't understand why you did this to me. I had dreams, questions I'll never get answers to. Why did you leave me when I loved you so much? Rest in peace."

She added in Hindi: "Mere dil ko pata hai ki tu yahi hai. Wapas aaja." (My heart knows you are here. Come back.)

                     [ THE INSTAGRAM COVER-UP ]

  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
  | [Image of Ketan & Siya Dancing]                              |
  |                                                              |
  | "You left me on my birthday. You left when we were so close  |
  |  to getting married. Why did you leave me when I loved you   |
  |  so much? Rest in peace..."                                  |
  |                                                              |
  | "Mere dil ko pata hai ki tu yahi hai. Wapas aaja."           |
  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
               |
               v
  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
  |              CYBER FORENSIC REVELATION                       |
  | - Post drafted using a device in active coordination with    |
  |   Chetan Chaudhary's burner line.                            |
  | - Staged to create a public record of grief.                 |
  +--------------------------------------------------------------+

But as the post gained sympathy online, Ketan’s relatives were raising questions. Ketan was not an amateur trekker; he was an experienced climber who knew the steep, slippery slopes of the Western Ghats intimately. The wind at Lohagad was strong, but the family told the police that a sudden, clumsy slip by someone of Ketan’s athletic build made no sense. The performative nature of Siya's Instagram post began to smell less like grief and more like a calculated cover story.

The Fatal Climax on the Sahyadri Ledge | June 18, 2026 | Lohagad Fort, Pune

The weather on the morning of June 18 was scorching, thick with intense, suffocating summer heat. Ketan, Siya, and two of her close friends arrived at the base of Lohagad Fort. Siya had insisted on the trek to celebrate her upcoming birthday, persuading Ketan to ignore his previous fears of the mountain. Her two friends trailed far behind on the steep stone stairs, leaving the couple to walk ahead into the quiet isolation of the upper levels.

Waiting in the shadows of the ancient ruins was Chetan Chaudhary. Despite the intense, blistering heat of the day, Chaudhary was dressed bizarrely to avoid recognition. Approach-road and fort CCTV cameras captured him wearing a thick, heavy winter hoodie pulled tightly over his face, dark sunglasses, and large headphones.

  [ LOHAGAD FORT HIGH-ALTITUDE CRIME SCENE ]

  [Fort Entrance] 
         |
         | (10:00 AM: CCTV spots Chetan in heavy winter hoodie)
         v
  [Cliff Trail] ---> (Friends lag behind)
         |
         v
  [Dangerous Precipice Edge] 
         |  (10:30 AM: Siya lures Ketan to edge for photo;
         |   Chetan approaches from behind. They push him.)
         |
         v (400-foot sheer drop)
         |
  [Deep Gorge / Recovery Site] (3-hour rescue by Shivdurg Mitra)

At 10:30 AM, near a blind, sheer drop where the wind whipped violently against the stone edge, Siya guided Ketan to the very brink for a photograph. As Ketan turned his back to pose, Chaudhary stepped out. Together, Siya and Chetan struck Ketan with a blunt object, and gave a powerful, final push.

Ketan fell silently through the air, plunging 400 feet down the vertical rock face.

Moments later, Siya called the police, screaming into the receiver that her fiancé had slipped while trying to take a picture. It took the Lonavala Rural Police and the expert search-and-rescue team of Shivdurg Mitra three agonizing hours of hacking through dense, thorny vegetation to recover Ketan's broken body from the bottom of the ravine.

(Note: While some early reports from local agencies listed the date as June 19 to align with Siya's actual birthday, official court documents, FIR filings, and SP Gill's briefings confirm the crime occurred on the morning of June 18.)

The "Snake Alibi" and the First Failed Attempt | June 14, 2026 | Lohagad Fort, Pune

The horror of June 18 was only successful because the co-conspirators had learned from a failed attempt four days prior. On June 14, Siya had lured Ketan to the exact same spot on Lohagad Fort. Standing near the edge, she had given him a violent shove.

By a stroke of immense luck, Ketan’s fall was broken by a sturdy, low-hanging tree branch jutting out from the cliff face, which broke his descent and saved his life. He scrambled back up, bruised and terrified, but alive.

With cold-blooded quickness, Siya fabricated an alibi on the spot. She screamed that she had seen a highly venomous viper slithering directly toward his boots. She claimed that in her frantic, blind panic to shove him away from the snake's deadly strike, she had accidentally pushed him too hard. Ketan, deeply in love and trusting, believed her completely. He was, however, so traumatized by the near-death experience that he became highly reluctant to return to the fort.

To get him back there on June 18, Siya used immense emotional pressure, even calling Ketan’s mother to ask her to convince him to go.

Sabotage at Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport | June 6, 2026 | Mumbai Airport & Expressway Transit

Before the mountain cliffs were chosen as the murder site, the plan was to avoid the marriage altogether. In the first week of June, the couple was scheduled to fly to Bali, Indonesia, for an ultra-luxury pre-wedding photoshoot.

But during a breakfast stop at a transit hotel along the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, Siya slipped Ketan's passport out of his travel bag. Slipping into the hotel washroom, she tore the passport to shreds and flushed it down the toilet.

                 [ THE PASSPORT SABOTAGE ]

  +-------------------------------------------------------+
  |              Outing to Mumbai Airport                 |
  |  - Destination: Bali, Indonesia (Pre-Wedding Shoot)   |
  +---------------------------+---------------------------+
                              |
                              v
  +-------------------------------------------------------+
  |               Stop for Breakfast En Route             |
  |  - Siya steals Ketan's passport from his bag.         |
  |  - Tears passport and flushes it down the washroom.   |
  +---------------------------+---------------------------+
                              |
                              v
  +-------------------------------------------------------+
  |                 Arrival at Airport                    |
  |  - Ketan discovers passport is missing.               |
  |  - Trip is canceled; forced return to Pune.           |
  +-------------------------------------------------------+

When they arrived at the international terminal in Mumbai, a frantic search ensued. With Ketan’s passport missing, the entire trip had to be canceled. Siya simulated despair, picking a major argument with Ketan over his "carelessness"—a fight she later used to demand a local trek to Lohagad Fort as compensation.

The Intercepted Date | June 4, 2026 | Gahunje, Pune

The very first attempt on Ketan's life had been scheduled for June 4. Siya had planned a morning trek, coordinating with Chaudhary to ambush Ketan on the trails. However, the plot was inadvertently foiled by Ketan's father, Vishal, who insisted his son stay in Pune for an urgent, high-stakes board meeting regarding a new residential development under Agarwal Builders.

This schedule conflict forced the conspirators to cancel that day's trek, prompting Siya to execute the airport passport sabotage two days later to keep Ketan in the country.

Scouting the Cliff | May 31, 2026 | Lohagad Fort, Pune

The physical blueprint of the murder was drawn on May 31, 2026. While the Agarwal and Goyal families believed Siya was spending her weekend planning the wedding details, she and Chetan Chaudhary took a trip to Lohagad Fort together.

They spent hours walking the ancient paths, not as tourists, but as surveyors. They evaluated the steepness of various drops, mapped the areas with the poorest cellular reception, and finally selected the wind-swept, barrier-free ledge that would eventually become Ketan’s final resting place.

The Golden Cage of a 17-Crore Wedding | February 2026 | Pune & Jaipur

The tragedy of Ketan Agarwal began in February 2026 with an announcement that captivated Pune's high society. The engagement of the young real estate director to the daughter of a major bulk spice and dry fruit merchant from Market Yard was celebrated with grand parties.

             [ PROJECTED WEDDING EXPENSES VS. ACTUAL BACKGROUND ]

+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Expense Category        | Projected Cost          | Family Profile          |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Palace Rental           | ₹14 - ₹17 Crores        | Prominent Real Estate   |
| (Jaipur/Udaipur Venue)  |. | Developer [cite: 5, 7].|
+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Travel Logistics        | Two Private Jets        | Wholesale Spice & Dry   |
|                         |. | Fruits Trade [cite: 29]. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Birthday Outing         | 40-Room Resort Booking  | Bakery and Commerce     |
| (Mahabaleshwar)         | [cite: 13, 25].      | Student [cite: 2, 5]. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+

To the public, it was a union of immense wealth. The wedding, scheduled for November, was budgeted at a staggering 14 to 17 crore rupees (approx. $2 million USD). A historic luxury palace in Jaipur had been booked, and two private charter jets had already been reserved to fly guests to the venue.

But for Siya, the lavish arrangements were a golden cage. Trapped between her family's social ambitions and the conservative expectations of her community, she felt unable to call off the arranged marriage. Rather than face the social fallout of calling off a multi-million-dollar alliance, she and Chaudhary decided on a far more permanent escape.

The Shadows of Market Yard | Spring 2025 – Early 2026 | Market Yard, Pune

Long before Ketan Agarwal entered the picture, the roots of the tragedy were laid in Pune’s bustling Market Yard wholesale bazaar. Siya Goyal, a young commerce student running a boutique bakery, spent her afternoons at her father’s bulk spice shop. Directly adjacent to the Goyal establishment was the wholesale dry fruit shop belonging to the Chaudhary family.

              [ CRIME SCENE PHYSICAL RELATIONSHIPS ]

   ================================================================
            PUNE MARKET YARD (WHOLESALE TRADING COMPLEX)
   ================================================================
   +------------------------------+  +----------------------------+
   |      Goyal Family Shop       |  |   Chaudhary Family Shop    |
   |   (Bulk Spices & Dry Fruits) |  |   (Wholesale Dry Fruits)   |
   +--------------+---------------+  +-------------+--------------+
                  |                                |
                  | Proximity                      | Proximity
                  +--------------->  <-------------+
                                   ||
                                   v
                      [ Clandestine Relationship ]

Over shared teas and afternoons spent navigating the chaotic trade lanes of the market, Siya and Chetan Chaudhary fell deeply in love. It was a quiet, passionate affair that existed entirely in the shadow of their families' business empires.

When Siya’s father arranged her alliance with the real estate heir Ketan Agarwal in early 2026, the young lovers made a pact: Ketan was not merely a rival; to them, he was an obstacle that had to be systematically, silently removed.

They chose Lohagad Fort as their stage, believing the mountain winds and slippery rocks would hide their secret forever. But as they sit in their cold cells in Pune, they are left with the reality that no mountain drop is deep enough to bury the truth.