Cops say Siya killed Ketan, proving it will be easier said than done
The Pune Lohagad Fort murder case may finally come down to a few feet of rock. The rock from which 26-year-old Ketan Agarwal fell to
The Pune Lohagad Fort murder case may finally come down to a few feet of rock. The rock from which 26-year-old Ketan Agarwal fell to his death on June 18. In the three weeks since, what was initially treated as a trekking accident has become a closely watched murder investigation. A young businessman is dead before his wedding, his fiancee Siya Goyal, 20, and her boyfriend Chetan Chaudhary, 22, have been arrested. The police theory is that the two conspired to push Ketan off the Lohagad Fort. Read Full Story Through official statements and unofficial briefings, the Pune Rural Police has gone some way towards convincing the public of their core theory: that Siya, unhappy with her arranged marriage to Ketan and in love with Chetan, conspired with him to kill her fiance by pushing him off a cliff. According to the police, the planning involved cafe meetings, rehearsals and even a failed attempt. That is the case as it exists in the headlines. None of this is proved yet. Siya Goyal and Chetan Chaudhary remain accused persons. For a court to find them guilty, that police story will have to move from allegation to proof. The alleged affair may establish motive; the cafe meetings and rehearsals may establish planning. Phone records, clothes, CCTV footage, location data and conduct after the fall may strengthen the chain. But for this chain to hold up in court, it must lead to one conclusion, and one alone: that Ketan did not slip, jump or lose his balance, but was deliberately pushed. That is harder to prove than it is to allege -- something the Pune Police appears to recognise. In a now-withdrawn plea for lie-detector tests, the police reportedly told a court that it had neither a direct eyewitness nor conclusive evidence establishing who allegedly pushed Ketan to his death. What they claimed to have were "confessions" by Siya and Chetan. Siya with her boyfriend Chetan.
Both have been arrested by the Pune Rural Police. Senior advocate Tanveer Ahmed Mir dismisses confessions made in police custody as "bulls**t". Mir, a prominent criminal defence lawyer who represented the Talwar couple in the appeal that led to their acquittal in the 2008 Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case, is equally blunt about public perception. Public perception "never works in a court of law and never should", he says. The job of a court is not to mirror the anger outside it, but to ask a cold question: what has actually been proved? What makes the Lohagad case difficult is the kind of evidence on which it appears to rest right now: a murder prosecution built largely, perhaps entirely, on circumstantial evidence. THE PANCHSHEEL RULES Indian law does not require an eyewitness, or a video recording, to prove murder. Courts can and often do convict on circumstantial evidence: a chain of facts that points only to one conclusion. But the chain must be complete. Each circumstance must be proved, and together they must exclude every reasonable alternative explanation. If one link breaks, the benefit of the doubt goes to the accused, advocate Mir tells IndiaToday.in. The principles governing circumstantial evidence go back almost as far as the Republic of India itself. In Hanumant v. State of Madhya Pradesh, a 1952 judgment, the Supreme Court warned courts against mistaking suspicion for proof. The Supreme Court later crystallised the test in Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra (1984) as the five "panchsheel" principles: each circumstance must be fully proved, point only towards guilt and be conclusive in nature; together, the circumstances must exclude every reasonable alternative theory and form a chain that leaves no reasonable possibility of innocence. Siya and Chetan captured on CCTV camera outside a Pune cafe where, according to the police, they plotted Ketan's murder. Mir calls it an "unbreakable chain". The prosecution does not win by showing that many things look suspicious.
The BriefWire