Mumbai:
Siya Goyal’s parents have thrown light on the exact nature of her connection with Chetan Chaudhary, as the investigation into the alleged murder of her fiance Ketan Agarwal advances. Both Siya and Chetan are the key accused in the case.
Her parents, Pravin Goyal and Pooja Goyal, have told NewsDotz that Siya and Chetan were friends, but “not in a romantic relationship”.
“After her engagement with Ketan, I never noticed her avoiding Ketan or not talking to him or ignoring plans made together. Had she been with Chetan, she would have shown the signs. I never saw any such signs these last four months,” Pooja Goyal, Siya’s mother, said.
Siya and Ketan were engaged in February.
To a question about many photos of Chetan and Siya spending time together in the context of the buzz that both were in a relationship, Pooja said the two had gone to a friend’s wedding.
“They were not in a relationship. It was only a friend’s wedding where they went,” she said, adding Ketan also knew that she had a friend called Chetan.
Siya’s father, Pravin, said the police questioned him and his wife for 12 hours and they have cooperated with all possible answers.
Pooja strongly criticised “false reports” about Siya’s character, linking her with a drinking habit and partying late into the night. “Even the police told us that she never asked for a beer in the police station. It was only a rumour spread by the media,” Pooja said.
Pooja agreed with reports that said Siya had not completed Class 12, and described her daughter as somebody who was not interested in studies. “That she was not a Class 12 pass was told to Ketan’s family. She didn’t like studying. So she started a cake business from home,” Pooja said.
Siya’s father added the cake business was a small, personal setup. “She made the cakes at home. It kept her occupied. She would get orders on the phone from friends and relatives,” her father, Pravin, said.
Pravin said he would have “definitely taken some action” had he known that Chetan had indeed played a romantic role in his daughter’s life. Even Siya’s mother, who is very close to her daughter, said Siya “never mentioned that she did not love Ketan” or that she had been in a relationship with another man.
“I want to tell everyone, if my daughter is guilty, fasttrack this case as soon as possible and hang her,” Pooja said.
The FIR filed by Ketan’s father, Vishal Devichand Agarwal, alleged that both Chetan and Siya pushed his son off a cliff to his death. Ketan left home on June 18 morning, picked up Siya from Kiwale bridge on the Pune-Mumbai highway before finally heading to the fort. At 10.45 am, Siya called her fiance’s mother, claiming that he had accidentally fallen into a gorge at Lohagad Fort. Locals and the police found him in the gorge and took him to hospital, where the doctors declared him dead.
On June 21, Ketan Agarwal’s father and relatives visited the exact spot of the fall and concluded that the location made an accidental slip highly improbable, according to the FIR. His friends, Navdeep Jindal and Tarun Mittal, accompanied the family to inspect the cliff.
