Pune realtor Ketan Agarwal murder: Pune court extends judicial custody of Siya Goyal by 14 days

A Pune court on July 16 extended till June 29 the judicial custody of Siya Goyal and Chetan Chaudhary, who were arrested on allegations that they were responsible for the murder of Goyal's fiancé and Pune realtor Ketan Agarwal.

The accused were produced via video-conferencing from prison. 

Judicial magistrate AM Vibhute at Wadgaon Mawal near Pune also ordered the preservation and production of CCTV footage from the Pune Rural Superintendent of Police’s office for June 23, the date on which the accused were arrested.

The said direction was issued while partly allowing an application filed by Chaudhary challenging the legality of his arrest.

He submitted that while the police recorded the time of arrest as 4.30 PM on June 23, Chaudhary had in fact been brought to the Pune Rural SP office at around 12:15 AM the same day.

The plea stated that since the FIR was registered at 12 PM on June 23, the accused's detention of nearly 12 hours prior to the FIR's registration was illegal. 

The court rejected this contention.

However, it directed the authorities to preserve the footage and produce it before the court within 15 days.

Ketan Agarwal, a director at his family's firm Success Group, was killed at Lohagad Fort near Maharashtra's Lonavala, while he was treking in the area with his fiancé Siya Goyal.

The incident was initially registered as an accidental death at the Lonavala Rural Police Station. On a complaint by the family, police initiated a deeper inquiry and examined call records, mobile location data, and CCTV footage from the fort.

The footage showed a man in a hoodie and face mask in the June heat, later identified as Goyal’s associate Chaudhary, near the fort’s ticket counter, covertly following the couple during the trek.

Five days after Agarwal's death, police arrested Goyal and Chaudhary on June 23, invoking Section 103 (murder) and Section 61 (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. 

They were remanded to seven-day police custody by the Wadgaon Mawal court on June 23. Later, it was extended till July 3.

On July 3, the two accused were sent to judicial custody till July 16, which has now been extended till July 29.