A mannequin tumbles 400 feet off the ramparts of Lohagad fort, lands on the rocks below, and pune police note the angle, the trajectory, the damage. It is a grim piece of theatre — a dummy standing in for 24-year-old IHG, whose body made the same descent, allegedly at the hands of two people who were supposed to be closest to him. But the harder drop is the one the prosecution must now engineer: getting the charge sheet to land cleanly in court, where a café meeting and a deleted chat history will be asked to bear the entire weight of premeditation.

According to india Today, pune police now allege that siya Goyal — Ketan's fiancée — and her boyfriend chetan Chaudhary met at a pune café the day before the killing to plan the murder in detail. The claim is specific: siya allegedly gave a pre-arranged 'signal' to chetan at the fort, upon which he pushed Ketan over the edge. The choreography, police say, was rehearsed — not improvised.

News18 reported CCTV footage showing siya and chetan together at the pune café, a visual that places them in the same room roughly 24 hours before Ketan died. For the prosecution, this is the centrepiece: evidence of a meeting whose sole alleged purpose was to script a killing. For the defence, it is two people having coffee — an act that, on its own, proves nothing more sinister than acquaintance.

And this is where the case pivots from a dramatic police narrative into the cold arithmetic of criminal law.

The wallet PLATFORM' target='_blank' title='digital-Latest Updates, Photos, Videos are a click away, CLICK NOW">digital Trail — Present and Absent

Perhaps the most forensically consequential detail to emerge is the allegation that both siya and chetan deleted whatsapp chats and call logs before and after the murder. india Today and multiple outlets, including dna, have reported this claim. The deletion itself is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it suggests consciousness of guilt — why scrub your communications unless they contain something incriminating? On the other, deleted data is not the same as recovered data. The charge sheet's strength will depend entirely on whether pune police's cyber forensics team has retrieved the substance of those conversations — the actual messages — or is relying on the fact of deletion alone.

Under Section 65B of the indian Evidence Act (now mirrored in Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam provisions), electronic evidence requires a certificate of authenticity. Metadata showing deletion timestamps is valuable, but the prosecution's case for premeditation lives or dies on whether the content of those chats can be produced. A charge sheet that says 'they deleted chats' without producing them invites the defence to argue: perhaps the chats contained nothing relevant, and deletion was routine phone hygiene. It is a thin argument, but courts have acquitted on thinner.

The 'Signal' — What It Must Mean in Law

police have stated that siya gave a 'signal' to chetan before the push. According to india Today, this forms the basis of the allegation that siya was not merely present but was the orchestrator — the one who decided the moment of execution. If established, this is devastating: it converts siya from a passive bystander or even an accessory into a co-conspirator exercising command-and-control at the point of killing.

But what, precisely, was this signal? A nod? A word? A whatsapp message sent in real time? The sourcing so far does not specify, and the distinction matters enormously. A signal captured on CCTV or in a recoverable wallet PLATFORM' target='_blank' title='digital-Latest Updates, Photos, Videos are a click away, CLICK NOW">digital message is evidence. A signal described only in a confession — particularly one extracted during custodial interrogation — data-faces the formidable barrier of Section 25 of the indian Evidence Act, which renders confessions to police inadmissible.

Mutual Blame, Then Mutual Admission — A Prosecutor's gift and Trap

india Today has reported that siya and chetan initially turned on each other — each pointing the finger at the other as the mastermind — before both reportedly accepted their involvement in the crime. This sequence is tactically significant. The initial mutual accusations are, paradoxically, useful to the prosecution: they establish that both accused knew what happened and were present and active. Neither claimed innocence of knowledge; they fought only over degree of culpability.

But the 'acceptance' that followed is legally precarious. If these admissions were made to police officers, they are inadmissible as confessions. If made before a magistrate under Section 164 CrPC (now Section 183 BNSS), they carry weight — but only if the magistrate followed procedure meticulously, ensuring the statements were voluntary and that the accused were warned they were not obliged to confess. The charge sheet must specify the precise procedural route through which these admissions entered the record.

The question of who was the mastermind — siya or Chetan — also has sentencing implications. police initially suggested chetan persuaded Siya, according to india Today's earlier reporting. The latest version inverts this, with siya cast as the plotter who gave the signal. If the prosecution cannot settle on a consistent theory of who led whom, the defence will exploit the contradiction.

The Dummy Drop — Dramatic but Limited

pune police's crime scene reconstruction — dropping a dummy 400 feet from Lohagad fort to study the trajectory and injuries — is visually arresting and has dominated news cycles. According to dna, the exercise was meant to verify whether the fall was consistent with a push rather than a slip or a jump. But forensic reconstructions of this kind are demonstrative, not dispositive. They can show that a push is consistent with the evidence; they cannot, by themselves, prove one occurred. The defence will argue that the same trajectory could result from an accidental fall — Lohagad Fort's ramparts are not exactly fitted with safety railings.

What the reconstruction does do, however, is signal prosecutorial seriousness. It suggests the police are building a case designed for courtroom presentation, not just media consumption — a distinction that, in high-profile indian murder cases, is not always guaranteed.

The Gap Between police Narrative and Courtroom Proof

Here is the dimension this case demands and most coverage has not provided: the distance between a police press conference and a Sessions court conviction is vast, and it is measured in procedure, not drama. pune police have constructed a compelling narrative — café meeting, signal, push, deleted chats, mutual blame, eventual admission. Each element, individually, is suggestive. Together, they paint a picture of cold premeditation.

But indian courts do not convict on pictures. They convict on evidence that survives cross-examination. The charge sheet, when filed, will need to demonstrate: (a) that the café meeting's purpose was criminal conspiracy, not social interaction, supported by recovered wallet PLATFORM' target='_blank' title='digital-Latest Updates, Photos, Videos are a click away, CLICK NOW">digital communications or credible witness testimony; (b) that the 'signal' is corroborated by something beyond a police-recorded statement; (c) that the deleted chats have been forensically recovered and their contents support premeditation; and (d) that the admissions by both accused were obtained through procedures that make them admissible.

If any of these pillars is hollow, the case does not collapse — but it may slide from murder (Section 103 BNS, formerly 302 IPC) to a lesser charge, or from premeditated murder to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, where the sentencing calculus changes dramatically.

The police version is vivid, sequential, and emotionally satisfying. The courtroom version must be all of those things and also legally airtight. Whether pune police have built the second or merely performed the first is the question that will determine whether IHG's family sees justice — or watches a compelling story unravel on cross-examination.