As disconcerting as it is to admit, we are quite used to relationships turning up on true crime podcasts. Anything from affairs and betrayals to scams and murder has become another red flag to hedge against when looking for romantic partners. Yet these cases, no matter how common they have become, never fail to be deeply unsettling and tragic. Becoming a victim at the hands of someone you once believed loved and cherished you is a story as timeless and tragic as the passage of time itself.
In recent news, Pune businessman Ketan Agarwal, aged 26, was thrown to his death at Lohagad Fort. He had recently travelled to Lohagad Fort believing he was there to celebrate his fiancée Siya Goyal's 20th birthday. As a recently engaged couple preparing for their lavish ₹17 crore wedding, they appeared to outsiders as the perfect picture of modern romance. Ketan seemed to have found the life he had always imagined: a loving fiancée, the promise of marriage, and a future that appeared as secure as it was idyllic.
Instead, according to Pune Rural Police, the birthday trip became the setting for Agarwal's heartless murder by his fiancée and her alleged lover Chetan Chaudhary.
Pune police speculate that Goyal, together with Chaudhary, pushed her fiancé Ketan from a cliff at Lohagad Fort following multiple other failed attempts to kill him. Police further claim that the pair had probably spent weeks planning the murder that included Goyal removing Agarwal's passport to prevent him from going abroad for a business trip before they could carry out their plan. CCTV footage, mobile phone records and witness statements allowed investigators to reconstruct the events leading to the fall, with Goyal's social media activity after Agarwal's death only serving to make her look more guilty
While on paper, Siya falling in love with someone else and not wanting to go through her arranged marriage anymore is not so extraordinary; however, er the real question is why go as far as murder? And what’s more disturbing than the planned nature of the murder is that it wasn't even their first attempt. Why continue to come up with murder plans rather than just call off the wedding?
Relationships end every day, engagements are broken, weddings are cancelled,d and while an argument can be made for familial pressure and causing embarrassment, it's hardly something that a family cannot recover from. Very few people, however, would think the only alternative to avoid some short-term embarrassment is to spend weeks orchestrating the murder of your fiancée. The question, then, is not simply why the relationship ended, but why committing an actual crime appeared easier than simply admitting the truth.
While understanding Siya’s psychology would in no way justify her behaviour, but its also impossible to ignore the instinct to try and understand why someone would take such drastic and unnecessary actions to solve a seemingly simple enough problem. It makes me want to speculate what could have been going through Siya’s mind to be smiling and doing wedding prep while also planning the murder of her fiancé. Psychologists actually have a name for the difference between our realities and our beliefs: cognitive dissonance. While most people like to believe that they are good, what happens when your actions contradict your self-image? People usually tend to avoid such discomfort that forces them to confront themselves. People make excuses and try to justify actions that, under stable circumstances, would most definitely be unjustifiable. Was Siya going through something similar while she lived two lives for months in an attempt to feed into the delusion of a happy ending after allegedly committing a murder? Did she build separate versions of herself, one who continued to smile and reassure family while the other imagined freedom at any cost?
Social media seems to have only exacerbated this added pressure of performance. Relationships today exist not merely between two people but are also acted out in front of an audience. Weddings are no longer ceremonies but rather carefully curated social events that transform intimacy into something constantly displayed, validated, and consumed. The pressure to preserve the appearance of a perfect life with perfect relationships often leads people to some unreasonable avenues of deception. For Siy, saving her family from the assumed embarrassment of ending an engagement, particularly one involving wealthy families, was more important than her life and that of her fiancé. In an attempt to avoid becoming a public failure and carrying the financial and social consequences of ending her engagement, she not only destroyed her family but also that of the victim and his family.
This is not to suggest that social media or societal expectations are a justification for murder. Millions of people navigate broken relationships without resorting to crime and violence, yet this background does give us some perspective into the somewhat absurd actions of a young woman. Rather than ending one life chapter and accepting its consequences, some individuals continue performing affection while privately constructing an entirely different future.
If the allegations in the Lohagad case are true, what is perhaps most disturbing is not the violence itself but the apparent normalcy that preceded it. While family members reportedly continued planning the November wedding with everybody celebrating birthdays and events together, Siya made sure her performance remained convincing until the very end.
It only makes one question whether,t if Goyal had decided to put more faith in her own family and give more importance to the person who loved and cared for her so much, she could have avoided a lot of tragedy,y and yet the thought brings little comfort to the family who have lost their son.
If the police allegations are ultimately proven in court, then Ketan Agarwal did not simply lose his life at the edge of a fort. He also spent the final weeks of his life inside a relationship that had already ended without ever being allowed to know it. Every birthday celebration, every wedding discussion and every promise of a shared future would have been part of a performance maintained until his final moments. That, perhaps, is what makes this case so profoundly tragic.
References:
- Pune Rural Police. (2026, June). Investigation and press briefing regarding the Lohagad Fort murder case.
- The Indian Express. (2026, June). Reports on the Lohagad Fort murder investigation, including police allegations regarding the alleged conspiracy, passport removal, CCTV footage, and arrests.
- Hindustan Times. (2026, June). Coverage of the Lohagad Fort murder case and police investigation.
- India Today. (2026, June). Coverage of the Lohagad Fort murder and investigation.
- Eva Illouz. (2012). Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. Polity Press.
- Leon Festinger. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.