- Pune businessman Ketan Agarwal was murdered alegedly by his fiancee Siya Goyal and Chetan Chaudhary
- Ketan and Raja Raghuvanshi were thrown off cliffs by their partners in planned murders
- Siya Goyal studied Raja Raghuvanshi's murder case and made detailed plans with better alibis
The murder of Pune businessman Ketan Agarwal at the hands of his fiancee Siya Goyal has been dominating headlines for weeks as the sinister plot was revealed in a police investigation, spearheaded by the Pune police. As details emerged, uncanny similarities have emerged between the murders of Raja Raghuvanshi and Ketan Agarwal.
In both cases, the victims were thrown off a cliff by their partners and investigators believe that Siya Goyal and her boyfriend and accomplice Chetan Chaudhary could have learnt their lessons from the plan hatched by Sonam Raghuvanshi to kill her husband.
NDTV spoke to police officers familiar with the case to piece the saga together -- a tale of a criminal mind, precision planning, and a cold heartless intention to kill.
While there are similarities in the two cases, the police have reason to believe that Siya Goyal had learnt from the mistakes of Sonam Raghuvanshi and made a better plan, better arrangements and created better alibis making it difficult for the police to crack the case.
The police say the breakthrough came to them in an epiphany, during the investigation.
Like a stream of consciousness novel, investigators had to peel through layers of alibis before reaching the point where the accused admitted to committing the crime. While a confession in police custody has little evidentiary value, it triggers evidence gathering in case of a murder investigation.
Like the pace and narration in the famous stream of consciousness novel, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, the police say the murder plot played out in reality just as it existed in the mind of Siya Goyal, shifting seamlessly between inner thoughts and external realities of its main character - in this case a woman who believed murder was the only way to escape marriage to Ketan Agrawal.
Asked if Siya Goyal was a what can be described as a criminal mind, an officer connected with the investigation told NDTV: "It was a crime of desperation. Personal relations and her thinking process led to her believe this was the way to go about it. The transactional element between families also played a role in her decision."
"Multiple factors contributed to Siya's decision to kill Chetan and family and societal beliefs was definitely one of them. But it went beyond that and the investigation suggests there was not one factor but a combination of several factors that triggered her decision to eliminate Ketan Agrawal," the officer added.
"In that sense, there was intention to commit crime, and they went through with it, plotting alibis to escape detection, trial and hopefully conviction," a police officer told NDTV.
The police also told NDTV that at this point, both Siya Goyal and Chetan Chaudhary have no regret about killing Ketan Agrawal and have not shown any signs of remorse.
"Time in jail usually breaks the most hardened criminals and perhaps with the duo now being in judicial custody, realisation with dawn on them as they spend time in jail," the officer hoped.
But the police say had it not been for sustained interrogation, the two would have got away with their act. While Ketan's family was not convinced that it was an accidental death, the police also had their doubts as the spot from where he fell was not as dangerous as some of the other spots on the trek at Lohagad Fort.
Now, the police also have reason to believe that the couple had conducted detailed research during planning the murder and they had gone through some of the news reports published on the Raja Raghuvanshi murder case, which was planned and orchestrated by his newly married wife, Sonam Raghuvanshi.
While Raja Raghuvanshi was murdered first and his body was flung from a cliff on a remote trek, the details in this case are different.
The police have told NDTV that both Siya and Chetan had pushed Ketan off the cliff together. This was part of the plan since if Siya pushed him alone, she may not have had enough strength to make sure he fell into the gorge below.
According to the police, the browsing history from a mobile phone seized from Siya Goyal's possession indicates that she did go through the details of the Raja Raghuvanshi murder, which took place in Meghalaya.
The police have also found that she checked whether women are beaten in police custody and the rights of female prisoners.
A second mobile phone seized from the Goyal residence could provide more clues on her planning and execution. The device has been sent for forensic examination.
Uma Raghuvanshi, the mother of Raja Raghuvanshi, said Siya Goyal's crime reminded her of her son and Sonam. She says neither of the accused have shown any remorse for their actions.
Sonam Raghuvanshi being out on bail could even embolden accused persons in similar cases as the Raja Raghuvanshi murder trial continues in Shillong, Uma Raghuvanshi said.
