For nearly two months now the media here in India are analyzing the various aspects of a strange, shocking, and puzzling case.
At the heart of this case is a calculated murder. On 14 June 2026, this 20-year-old young woman, Siya Goyal, told her fiancé Ketan Agarwal, that she had seen a snake near the edge of a cliff at Lohagad Fort in the hill station of Lonavala in Pune district, Maharashtra. She suggested visiting the place together and he happily went with her. When she reminded him of what she had seen earlier, he leaned down to look and she pushed him down the cliff. He grabbed a branch, and saved himself.
Did Ketan understand that his fiancée deliberately pushed him down the cliff? Or, did he think that his fall was accidental? Probably his excitement over being about to marry a beautiful daughter of a rich businessman did not let him perceive what any other man would easily have.
Four days later, she coaxed him back to the same spot. This time, while Ketan stood at the rampart looking out at the Sahyadri hills, two people pushed him from behind into a gorge 400 ft deep.
Later it came to be known that one of the two was Siya. The other person was a young man Siya was in love with – the 22-year old Chetan Chaudhary. He had followed them from a distance until the fateful moment. Later the police learnt that Siya and her lover Chetan, after considering several means of eliminating him, had finally concluded that throwing him off the cliff was the most feasible mans of getting rid of him.
The sad, shocking event is sure to evoke a legion of questions in anyone’s mind: Why did she agree to marry Ketan and go through the engagement in February? Couldn’t she have told her parents that she does not want to get married to Ketan? If she was afraid of their reaction, what prevented her from meeting Ketan and telling him that she was in love with another person for quite some time and so doesn’t want to marry him? Why did she think that the innocent, ignorant Ketan had to be killed? Just because he was unwittingly the obstacle that prevented her from marrying the man she loved? What about her conscience or values?
The media have discussed at length the problems that cause such tragedies in upper middle class or rich Indian families. All that these families want is an ‘alliance’ with another rich family. All they look for in the groom they choose for their daughter is how much money he makes. They don’t bother about their daughter’s wishes or whether she will be happy with the man whom they have found for her.
Think of the young woman who became a murderer. Her crime is not born of a momentary impulse. She nurtured it for weeks and months, planning and preparing.
The lesson in this sordid tale is obvious. The moment you notice a poisonous weed in the garden of your mind, you must root it out - with prayer, penance and good counsel. If you let the poisonous weed grow, then there will be no plants in your garden.
God warned Cain, “Sin is lurking at the door.” (Gen 4 : 7) Cain didn’t bother and opened the door. He ends up as the perpetrator of the first fratricide in biblical history. While he is cursed by God, it is evil that triumphs and cackles with glee.
