Ketan Agarwal murder: Police discover cryptic texts on Siya Goyal's mobile

Siya Goyal and Chetan Chaudhary get a three-day extension for police custody, the prime accused in Pune realtor Ketan Agarwal’s murder case.

The prosecution ordered a three-day extension of police custody based on recovered data from Siya and Chetan’s mobile phones, which contained chats in signs and coded language, and that their custodial interrogation was necessary to decode the conversations.

However, the accused’s counsel opposed the plea and said the police had already been given enough time to investigate the case and that further custodial interrogation was unwarranted.

After hearing both sides, the court rejected the prosecution’s plea and remanded the accused to judicial custody till July 16. The prosecution informed the court that police had conducted a panchnama at the spot where Goyal allegedly disposed of Agarwal’s passport while travelling towards Mumbai, PTI reported.

According to the statement of Assistant Public Prosecutor Rajashree Virkud, “Investigators also carried out a panchnama at the place where Goyal and Chaudhary allegedly rehearsed how to kill Agarwal”.

She said police had recovered another mobile phone belonging to Goyal and sent it to the forensic science laboratory (FSL) for examination. She also noted, “Data from the phones seized earlier has already been retrieved, and investigators have received the forensic report. The recovered chats contain coded language, including nicknames and emojis, whose meaning can be explained only by the accused”.

Pune Rural Police on Thursday took Siya to a Lullanagar location where she and Chetan had allegedly rehearsed Ketan’s murder before actually pushing him off Lohagad Fort. Siya was there for around 30 minutes in the morning, HT reported earlier.

Read More: Ketan Agarwal case: Siya Goyal and Chetan to undergo lie-detector tests.

During a search at Goyal’s residence in Pune’s Market Yard area, investigators seized the clothes she was allegedly wearing on June 18, the day Agarwal died.

According to the statement of a Pune Rural Police officer, “The probe found that Siya and Chetan had rehearsed the act at an open space near a club in Lullanagar before carrying it out at Lohagad. She was taken there today and identified the location where the rehearsal had allegedly taken place”.

Police have also seized Siya’s clothes that she was allegedly wearing on the day of Ketan’s murder. Pune Rural Police on Wednesday reconstructed the crime scene with Chetan, while a similar reconstruction was conducted with Siya on Sunday. A dummy was pushed off the cliff in her presence, police said.

Ketan and Siya were scheduled to marry in November. Police also said that Ketan’s father, Vishal Agarwal, said in his complaint that his son had repeatedly expressed concern over Goyal’s closeness to Chaudhary and often mentioned his name during conversations. Meanwhile, police have moved the court to conduct a lie detector test on Siya, citing inconsistency in her statements.

The police also did a gait analysis on Chetan. The gait analysis is the study of human movements when walking or running and is used by cops to identify suspects captured on videos or CCTVs. Following this, the police will complete the legal procedure of the crime scene reconstruction.

Siya and Chetan are accused of pushing Ketan to his death from Lohagad Fort in Pune on June 18. On Friday, the duo was produced before Judicial Magistrate First Class AM Vibhute after the expiry of their police custody, news agency PTI reported.