Investigators have now uncovered what they believe to be a crucial piece of evidence in the Ketan Agarwal murder case.
A forensic examination had revealed that the accused Siya Goyal and co-accused Chetan Chaudhary made a phone call 34 minutes before they pushed Ketan off of Lohagad fort in Pune, killing him.
The call was identified through the accused's call detail records, and investigators are treating it as a final go-ahead before they carry out the murder plan.
Investigators had earlier said that Chetan Choudhary had disabled his mobile internet at around 7 am on June 18 to avoid creating a digital trail. He also left his personal phone at his workplace and borrowed another employee's mobile to answer his incoming calls.
Choudhary then followed Ketan and Siya to the fort, wearing a thick hoodie in the hot weather, which later gave him away to investigators.
Police believe that the phone call was to provide Choudhary with the exact location Goyal and Ketan were at in the fort and to confirm if there were no other tourists in the vicinity.
The police also believe that the two accused deleted their chats and voice records over three months to avoid leaving a digital trail. The police cyber wing is also trying to recover all their deleted chats and voice notes from WhatsApp and Instagram that date back three months.
They are also cross-referencing the recovered deleted data, location logs, and internet IP addresses from the time of the final.
Police say the main motive behind the killing was to cancel Siya’s November wedding with Ketan.
They also said that Siya and Ketan finalised the plan to murder Ketan as early as May.
Siya had also made an earlier attempt to push Agarwal off a cliff at the same Fort on June 14, sources said.
However, Agarwal saved himself by grabbing a bush. Sya Goyal then covered up her actions by lying about seeing a snake and claiming that she accidentally pushed him.
Choudhary followed them on their second attempt to make sure their plan wouldn't fail.
