A Pune court on Thursday remanded Siya Goel (20) and Chetan Chaudhary (22) to 14 days of judicial custody in connection with the alleged murder of realtor Ketan Agarwal, after rejecting the prosecutor's plea for an extension of police custody.
The two men had been taken to Judicial Magistrate First Class A.M. Vibhute after their police remand was completed, they said. During the hearing the prosecution asked for three days in police custody, arguing that chats were found in the accused’s mobile phones in coded language and symbols that needed to be decoded and were only retrieved through custodial interrogation.
The defence vehemently opposed that request, and argued that police had already been given time to investigate the case and that further custodial interrogation was unnecessary. After hearing both sides, the court rejected the prosecutor’s plea and remanded them both by order of the court to judicial custody until July 16.
Goel and Chaudhary were accused of pushing Agarwal to his death from a cliff at Lohagad Fort in Pune district on June 18. Agarwal and Goel were engaged and were going to get married in November this year.
Earlier in the day, Pune Rural Police took Siya Goel to her home and several other locations in the wake of the investigation. As they were escorting her out of her home, Goel made an obscene gesture by raising her middle finger at the media personnel waiting outside. Videos of the incident went viral on social media and police have not made any official comment regarding the gesture and are focusing on the murder investigation.
Meanwhile, investigators have widened the scope of the investigation and are also investigating the role of a third person, believed to be a classmate of Chetan Chaudhary. The man, a resident of Maharashtra's Beed district who currently works for a private company in Pune's Balewadi area, knew about the purported murder plan before the incident.
Sources said Goel and Chaudhary had discussed their plan with him and even invited him to go to Lohagad Fort on June 18 with them. But he did not join them. Police are investigating the man in order to verify these assertions and assess if he had any prior knowledge of the conspiracy.
According to sources, the man admitted to investigators that he had advised the accused against carrying out the alleged plan. Police are investigating claims that Chaudhary met him shortly after Agarwal’s death and that Goel contacted him later. Investigators are checking these claims through call detail records (CDRs), digital chats, location data and other electronic evidence.
As part of the investigation, Pune Rural Police also took Goel to a place near a club in Lullanagar where they believe she and Chaudhary allegedly rehearsed pushing a person off a cliff before the incident at Lohagad Fort. Goel allegedly identified the location where the rehearsal is believed to have taken place. Police are now trying to determine the exact date of the alleged rehearsal and whether anyone was there.
Investigators have also moved the court in Vadgaon Maval in a bid to obtain permission to conduct polygraph (lie detector) tests on both accused. Such examinations can only be done if the courts give the go-ahead and the accused is willing to consent. Police believe the tests could help verify the consistency of Goel and Chaudhary’s statements during the investigation.
In another development, police have recovered clothing from Goel’s residence that police believe she wore on the day of the alleged murder. The clothes are being sent to a forensic lab for analysis to compare them to other evidence collected during the investigation.
Investigators have collected a substantial amount of technical and digital evidence, including mobile phone data, chat records, GPS location history, CCTV footage and call records, to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to Agarwal's death.
The investigation continues and officials have not ruled out further questioning or new legal action if new evidence is found during the course of the investigation.
