Pune fort murder: 2 attempts, fiancée's birthday picnic ruse, and a mournful Insta post

A planned wedding at a palace. A birthday picnic at a historic fort. An alleged failed attempt to kill a groom-to-be. And then, after his death, a heartbroken Instagram tribute asking why he had left her.

On June 18, a 26-year-old Pune businessman named Ketan Vishal Agarwal fell 400 feet into a gorge at Lohagad Fort, a landmark site in Maharashtra.

His fiancee, Siya Goyal, told the Lonavala rural police that Ketan had slipped while the two were trekking. Strong winds. A moment of lost balance. A tragedy, she said.

The police registered an accidental death report.

Then they started looking closer.

What they found - through mobile records, 2,004 phone calls between Siya and another man, a switched-off internet connection, a missing passport, and a visit to the victim's home four days after his funeral - it was not a tragic accident. It was a plan. Carefully drawn up. Attempted twice. And, on the second visit to the same fort, completed.

On Tuesday, Siya Goyal and her alleged lover, Chetan Babulal Chaudhary, were taken into custody. Both confessed, police said.

The day after Ketan died, his body was recovered from the gorge. The day after that would have been Siya's birthday. She had known that too.

KETAN AND SIYA: THE COUPLE EVERYONE THOUGHT WAS HAPPY

Ketan Vishal Agarwal was the kind of young man families pointed to with quiet pride. A resident of Gahunje in Pune district, he was the director of a family-run real estate business - a 26-year-old with a name, a future, and, since February 2026, a fiance.

His engagement to Siya Goyal had been an arranged match. The two got engaged early this year, and from the outside, the relationship seemed to be heading exactly where families hoped.

The Agrawal family had not been subtle about their plans. They had booked a grand palace in Udaipur, Rajasthan, for the wedding ceremony that was supposed to happed in November.

Two special aircraft had been arranged for guests to travel. Forty rooms had been blocked at a luxury resort in Mahabaleshwar for Siya's upcoming birthday celebration on June 20.

Ketan's mother went shopping with Siya. They went out for dinner. "I met her many times," Ketan's mother later told reporters. "We went shopping and out for dinner together frequently, yet it never crossed our minds that she could be this kind of person."

Ketan was known as an experienced trekker, a detail that would later make the "accidental fall" story harder to believe. He was active. He knew the outdoors. He was careful on his feet.

He was months away from his wedding.

THE OTHER MAN: WHO IS CHETAN CHAUDHARY

While the Agrawal and Goyal families were making arrangements for a future together, Siya Goyal was already in a relationship with someone else.

Chetan Babulal Chaudhary, 22, lived in Kondhwa, Pune. He ran a small shop. He was not the sort of presence that would raise alarms in a family's background check on a prospective bride. He and Siya had known each other for about a year, according to Superintendent of Police Sandip Singh Gill.

Between January 1 and June 18, Siya and Chetan had exchanged 2,004 calls. In those six months, they had spoken for a combined 238 hours.

The police investigation established that Siya was unwilling to marry Ketan. She did not want to end the relationship with Chetan. And rather than simply saying no to a wedding she did not want, she and Chetan allegedly decided on something else entirely. Ketan Agarwal, they decided, needed to be removed.

"If she didn't want to get married, she could have simply refused; we would have cancelled the wedding immediately," Ketan's father, Vishal Agrawal, said later, his voice thick with grief and disbelief.

MAY 31: THE FORT, AND THE BIRTH OF A PLAN

On May 31, Ketan and Siya visited Lohagad Fort together. It was presented as a casual outing. A trek, a day out at one of Maharashtra's most celebrated historical landmarks. The fort sits at an elevation of roughly 3,400 feet, its walls rising above lush greenery, its gorges dropping sharply hundreds of feet below.

It was during this visit, police claim, that Siya first conceived the idea of what would happen here.

The fort's geography was not incidental to the plan. The steep gorges, the remote terrain, the possibility of a fall being passed off as an accident. For someone who had already decided to act, it was a location with obvious utility.

Siya came back from that May 31 visit and, investigators believe, began discussing what she had seen with Chetan.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE STOLEN PASSPORT

Before the first murder attempt, there was the Bali trip that never happened.

After the engagement in February, Ketan had planned a pre-wedding holiday to Bali. Four people were to travel together. The bookings were confirmed, the dates were set, and on the morning of the departure, the group headed to the airport.

The couple reached Mumbai airport and were preparing to board their flight when they discovered that Ketan's passport was missing.

The discovery brought the entire trip to an abrupt halt. Unable to travel without the document, Ketan was forced to abandon the journey and return home.

"They were leaving for Bali on the 6th. Four people were travelling to Bali together, but only Ketan's passport got stolen. Because of that, he couldn't go and had to return from the airport. How can only one person's passport go missing?" Ketan's father questioned.

What initially appeared to be an unfortunate travel mishap later acquired a far more sinister dimension.

According to police, Siya had allegedly stolen and deliberately misplaced Ketan's passport so that the couple would be unable to travel to Bali.

The reason the passport was destroyed, police believe, was to prevent the trip altogether. A holiday abroad, alone together, would have made the plan to eliminate Ketan at a familiar, staged location impossible to execute. The fort was the plan. Bali was a problem. The passport had to go.

JUNE 14: THE FIRST ATTEMPT

The first attempt came on June 14.

Siya took Ketan back to Lohagad Fort. Chetan Chaudhary was involved in the plan. The method they allegedly chose that day was to exploit fear. A snake sighting, a sudden alarm, enough shock and confusion to push Ketan towards the edge of a gorge.

According to the investigation, they tried to create a panic by staging a snake attack. But something went wrong. Ketan, apparently unaware of what was happening around him, unaware that the friends and the fiancee he had come trekking with had arranged something very different. He did not react the way they had intended. He did not step back towards the edge. He did not fall.

The first attempt failed.

'IT'S MY BIRTHDAY' - THE LURE BACK TO THE FORT

What happened after the failed June 14 attempt required Siya to find a reason. A convincing, innocent-sounding reason to bring Ketan back to the same fort one more time. She found one in her own birthday.

Siya Goyal's birthday was on June 19. She told Ketan she wanted to celebrate it at Lohagad Fort. A picnic at the fort, she suggested, something personal, something meaningful. She called family members and friends. She built a group. She made it look like a celebration in the making.

Ketan, who had already booked 40 rooms at a luxury Mahabaleshwar resort for her birthday, agreed. He was planning a birthday surprise in parallel. He had no reason to suspect the picnic proposal was anything other than a girlfriend's wish to spend time at a place she seemed to love.

He went back to the fort.

JUNE 18: THE LAST TREK

On June 18, the group arrived at Lohagad Fort.

Chetan Chaudhary was not visibly part of the group. He had left his own mobile phone behind at his shop - a deliberate move, investigators believe, to avoid location tracking. He carried an employee's phone instead. When calls came in to his number that day, it was his shop workers who picked up the phone, not Chetan.

His internet connection was switched off from 7 am to 5:40 pm. He arrived at Lohagad on a two-wheeler, separately.

When Siya's group reached a point on the fort from which the gorge dropped away sharply below, Chetan joined them from behind. According to Ketan's father, "The two went up together, hit Ketan Vishal Agarwal with an object, and threw him down from the top."

Ketan Agarwal fell nearly 400 feet. He died at the foot of the gorge.

Siya called the Lonavala rural police and said her fiance had slipped while taking photographs near the valley. There were strong winds. It was an accident. The police registered an accidental death report.

On June 19, rescue teams from the Lonavala rural police, Shivdurg Mitra Lonavala, and the Maval Wildlife Protection Organisation recovered Ketan's body from the gorge after an operation in difficult, rugged terrain. He was taken to hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.

June 19 was Siya Goyal's birthday.

THE INSTAGRAM POST

After Ketan's death became public, Siya shared an emotional Instagram story.

She wrote, "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."

The story included a video clip, Ketan, turned towards the back seat of a car, speaking to someone. The couple dancing. A romantic song in the background. And the Hindi line, "Mere dil ko pata hai ki tu yahi hai. Wapas aaja" (My heart knows that you are here. Come back.)

A screenshot of that Instagram story is now part of the police investigation.

THE PROBE: FROM ACCIDENT REPORT TO MURDER CASE

The shift from accident to murder investigation did not happen in a single moment. It happened in layers.

First, there was the family's unease. Ketan was an experienced trekker. The idea that he had simply lost his footing near a valley's edge did not sit right with those who knew him. SP Sandip Singh Gill acknowledged this. "Subsequent inquiries and information gathered from relatives and friends raised suspicions; it seemed unlikely for such an accident to occur spontaneously, especially given that Ketan was an experienced trekker," he told media.

Then, four days after the funeral, Siya Goyal visited Ketan's family home. His sister spoke with her. Something in Siya's responses felt off. Something the sister could not ignore.

Ketan's father, Vishal Agrawal, said, "When the police came with my son's body, Siya did not show any reaction. There was no sadness on her face." The family's doubts hardened, and information reached the police. Ketan's father then filed a formal complaint.

The police turned to the phones. Siya's mobile records, social media activity, and technical data were examined. What emerged was the pattern of 2,004 calls with Chetan Chaudhary across six months. 238 hours of conversation between a woman about to get married and a man who was not her fiance.

Investigators then looked at June 18 more closely. Chetan's internet had been off for over ten hours. His own phone had stayed behind at his shop. When police questioned every person who had called Chetan's number that day, they confirmed what the records suggested: Chetan had not been at his shop. His workers had answered for him.

ARRESTS, POLICE CUSTODY

The breakthrough came when investigators detained Chetan Chaudhary.

According to police, technical evidence, witness statements and questioning pointed towards a planned conspiracy rather than an accidental fall.

The local crime branch picked Chetan up at around 2 am today. During interrogation, Chetan allegedly confirmed the conspiracy. Based on his statement, Siya was arrested at around 7 am.

Both were booked for murder and criminal conspiracy following a complaint lodged by Ketan's father, Vishal Agarwal.

On Tuesday, the Pune district court remanded both accused to seven days of police custody.

A FATHER'S APPEAL, A MOTHER'S GRIEF

Vishal Agrawal, Ketan's father, spoke to the press with the weight of someone trying to make meaning where there is none.

"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? Their mindset is so cruel that someone's 26-year-old son could be killed. Society needs to take note of such a cruel mindset. Where does this ideology come from - their family, their upbringing?"

He asked that the case be fast-tracked. "The accused are punished as quickly as possible. They deserve the strictest possible punishment to send a clear message to everyone."

Ketan's mother, grief stripped of everything but its rawness, said, "My son is no more. Siya and her boyfriend are entirely responsible for it. She betrayed me and lied. There was nothing suspicious; we didn't have a single doubt." She too demanded the death penalty.

Police have said the investigation is ongoing. Forensic evidence is being gathered, and the exact sequence of events is still being established. Investigators are also determining whether anyone else may have been involved in the conspiracy.