A wedding planned for November in Udaipur, with a palace venue and elaborate arrangements already under way, is now at the centre of a murder case after police arrested 20-year-old Siya Goyal and 22-year-old Chetan Chaudhary on June 23 in connection with the death of her fiancé, 25-year-old Pune realtor Ketan Agarwal. Police allege the two conspired to kill Agarwal at Lohagad Fort near Lonavala on June 18; both are currently in judicial custody, and police say they have confessed, though this claim has not been tested in court.
Ketan, son of businessman Vishal Agarwal and a director at the family’s Success Group, had got engaged to Siya in February, with the wedding fixed for November. Estimates of the planned celebration’s scale vary. Police sources cited by Hindustan Times put the families’ expected spending at around ₹14 crore, with some reports citing figures as high as ₹17 crore, including arrangements for two private planes for guests. However, Siya’s mother, Pooja Goyal, told HT a more modest figure: “For the marriage, we had booked Ananta Resort in Udaipur. The cost was around ₹3 crore, and we were prepared to spend around ₹5 crore on the wedding.” The discrepancy between these figures remains unexplained.
The case was initially registered as an accidental death after Ketan was reported to have fallen during a trek. Investigators later said footage from Lohagad Fort’s CCTV system raised suspicions: a man in a hoodie was seen following at a distance despite temperatures of around 33 degrees Celsius that morning, a detail senior police inspector Dinesh Tayade said helped identify Chetan Chaudhary. Police separately allege that the pair had attempted a similar push four days earlier, on June 14, but that Ketan escaped by grabbing onto a bush.
Investigators allege Siya was in a relationship with Chaudhary despite her engagement to Ketan. According to a senior police officer cited by HT, call records showed the two spoke 2,004 times between January 1 and June 18, averaging 8–10 calls a day and totalling around 238 hours. Pune Rural Superintendent of Police Sandeep Singh Gill said, “We have recovered calls and chats between Siya and her boyfriend, and further analysis of that data is ongoing.” Police say they are examining whether the pressure of the upcoming wedding played a role; one officer, speaking about the investigation’s working theory, suggested Siya may have feared the social consequences of calling off the engagement rather than ending it directly a theory that remains unproven and forms only one line of the inquiry.
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Reports have also said Siya told investigators during questioning that she objected to the marriage after learning Ketan wore a hair patch. Vishal Agarwal disputed any suggestion this was concealed: “It is true that Ketan wore a small patch of wig. Siya and her family were informed about it before the engagement. If she had any issues, she should have said no.” He has separately said Siya’s composure after the death raised questions for his family: “When the body was recovered and all our family members were in shock, Siya was behaving like a very normal person, which my daughter first noticed.”
Chetan’s father, Babulal Chaudhary, has rejected the allegations against his son, saying he is being falsely implicated. The Maharashtra government has appointed senior advocate Ujjwal Nikam, who prosecuted the 26/11 Mumbai attacks case, as Special Public Prosecutor, and has agreed to fast-track the trial following a meeting between Vishal Agarwal and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. The investigation remains ongoing.