Lohagad Fort: Where the Story of Valor and Betrayal Resonates

By Gopal Ram Tripathi

A hill fort near Pune that survived Nizams, Mughals, and the British is now at the center of a murder investigation.

For centuries, Lohagad Fort has brought trekkers, historians, and monsoon-season day-trippers to the Sahyadri hills near Lonavala. This June, it became the site of something the fort's long history had never recorded: a homicide investigation involving an engaged couple and the woman's alleged lover.

A Fort That Remains As A Symbol of War

Lohagad, literally "Iron Fort", sits roughly 52 km northwest of Pune, connected by a narrow ridge to its twin, Visapur Fort. The fort's altitude measures about 1,033 metres, it is one of the oldest and regarded as a fort where the most battles have occurred in the Deccan.

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Its recorded history stretches back nearly a thousand years. It’s history traces back to its origins to the Yadava dynasty around the 11th century, though the site's remains goes back further still, a Jain inscription in Brahmi script, discovered in a cliffside cave in 2019, has been dated to roughly the 1st or 2nd century BCE, predicting that the hill served religious as well as military purposes long before it became a fort. 

Over the centuries, Lohagad changed hands repeatedly among the Satavahanas, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Yadavas, Bahmanis, Nizamshahis, Mughals, and Marathas. Malik Ahmad Nizam Shah, these names remain the ones in control over the fort around 1489, and then later passed to the Bijapur Sultanate before Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj seized it in 1648, the beginning of the fort's most celebrated chapter. Shivaji was forced to relinquish it to the Mughals under the 1665 Treaty of Purandar, only to recapture it in 1670 and turn it into one of the Maratha empire's principal treasuries, storing riches from his Surat campaigns within its rock-cut caves.

In the Peshwa era, statesman Nana Phadnavis took refuge at Lohagad and undertook major fortification work in 1789, building the fort's main gate, a stepwell, and several water tanks that still stand today. The British eventually took control of the fort in the early 19th century, ending its active military role. In peacetime, Lohagad settled into a quieter identity, a popular, moderately challenging trek accessible from both Mumbai and Pune, known for its "Vinchukata," or Scorpion's Tail, a narrow fortified driving force offering sweeping views of the surrounding valley.

June 2026: A Murder Scheme

It was against this backdrop, a fort built for sieges, treasuries, and treaties, that a very different, very modern story unfolded.

On 18 June 2026, Pune-based realtor Ketan Agarwal died after falling from Lohagad Fort. Police allege he was pushed to his death from a height of roughly 600 feet by his fiancée, Siya Goyal, 20, and Chetan Chaudhary, 22, described by investigators as Goyal's partner. Both have been arrested and are in custody.

According to police, Goyal had told investigators she did not want to go through with her marriage to Agarwal but felt calling off the wedding would bring disrepute to her family, and that this, allegedly, was the motive behind the plan to kill him instead. Investigators say the fort visit that ended in Agarwal's death was not the first attempt: Goyal and Agarwal had reportedly visited Lohagad on two earlier occasions, but she was unable to go through with pushing him. Police allege that on the third visit, Chaudhary carried out the act himself, telling Goyal beforehand, "you won't be able to do it, I'll handle it now". The two are said to have arranged a signal for the moment of the act.

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Investigators are also probing a possible blackmail angle, the theory that Chaudhary may have used knowledge of the earlier failed attempts as leverage over Goyal, including an alleged threat to expose the affair to her family. Phone records reportedly show the pair exchanged over 2,000 calls spanning some 238 hours, much of it, police say, devoted to planning. Police have since taken Goyal to Lohagad Fort for a crime-scene reconstruction to verify her account of how and where Agarwal was pushed; Chaudhary's father has maintained his son's innocence.

As of this writing, the case remains under active investigation, and the allegations against Goyal and Chaudhary have not been tested in court.

Fort’s History Expands

The fort now linked to the Agarwal case is Lohagad in Maharashtra's Pune district, over the years such sites remain as one of the vessels for the happenings of the crime to occur. There are many questions to answer but everything indicates a disheartening fate of a person who was caught in the crossfire.

For a site that has weathered a millennium of empires rising and falling, the events of June 2026 are a stark reminder that history and headlines don't always keep to their lanes, and that even the most fortified places carry stories no wall was ever built to stop.

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