“If she is found guilty, take her to the same fort and push her off the same place. That is all a father can say.”
Praveen Goyal said this in an interview with India Today TV about his daughter, Siya Goyal, who is accused of murdering her fiancé, Ketan Agarwal. Then he added: “Yes, she can be given the death penalty.”
Goyal is being treated at a hospital in Pune after a heart attack. The shock of his daughter’s arrest put him in intensive care, he said. He also said he cannot make sense of the charge. “I still find it impossible to believe my daughter could do something like this. She never lied to me and always followed the right path.”
He drew a line between grief and justice all the same. “If my daughter is found guilty, the court should not delay justice. She should be given the same punishment,” he said.
What police allege
Pune Police say Siya and her boyfriend, Chetan Chaudhary, plotted together and pushed Ketan into a gorge at Lohagad Fort on June 18. Investigators claim there were earlier failed attempts on his life. They allege Siya decided against ending the engagement because she feared it would shame her family. Both she and Chaudhary are in judicial custody, and the investigation is continuing.
The parents’ account
Siya’s mother, Pooja Goyal, told India Today TV that nothing looked wrong between the couple. “They used to video call each other, meet regularly and appeared happy together. Ketan even came home for dinner. We never got any indication that something was wrong,” she said.
She rejected the claim that Siya did not want the marriage. The family had spent nearly Rs 50,000 on shopping for a planned pre-wedding trip to Bali. “If she had told us she didn’t want to marry Ketan, why would we have spent so much on wedding shopping?” Pooja asked.
Praveen Goyal called Ketan “like a son” and said the loss had shattered both families. He denied an allegation from Agarwal’s father that the Goyals had hidden certain facts. The family, he said, knew nothing of trouble in the relationship or of an affair with a third person. He described Siya as a “simple girl” who seemed very happy about the wedding.
Sources
- Hang her, push her off the same fort if she’s guilty: Siya Goyal’s parents
- If found guilty, push her from same fort, says Siya's father
