Is murder more foul when committed by a woman?

(Left to right) Ketan Agarwal, Siya Gohal and Chetan Chaudhary

• However this case turns out to be, one glaring fact  stands out – prejudice against women
• Novelist and columnist Shobhaa De elaborated on the pressure faced by young Indians

Between 27, 000 to 29,000 murders are reported in India every year. But one murder committed barely three weeks ago has gripped the attention of the entire nation. In a Bollywood-style melodrama, Siya Gohal, a wealthy young woman from Pune, Maharashtra, has been arrested for the murder of her multi-millionare fiance Ketan Agarwal, while Chetan Chaudhary, said to be Siya’s secret boyfriend,  has been arrested as her accomplice.
According to the police, Siya Gohal pushed Ketan off a cliff on June 18 at the Lohagad fort, a UNESCO heritage site 65 km from Pune, and the police allege that Chetan Chaudhary  followed the couple incognito and stood by,  or was in the vicinity. The police say Siya told them that it happened ‘accidentally.’
The police have no doubt it was murder. Much of Indian media, to judge by what has been posted on social media since the incident, have no doubts about it, either. Most accounts did  not even say ‘alleged murder’ at the start, though they have started doing so now. They are convinced that she  planned and did it with her accomplice. What has followed is more like a hate campaign than media reportage.
At first glance, the evidence seems to be overwhelming. Every day, a sensational bit of news, often juicy, is uncovered. Siya and Chetan visited Lohagad fort three times before  committing themselves. Siya made a final recce of the location on May 31. She and Chetan devised a secret system of hand signals, and 2000 phone calls passed between them over the past six months. A CCTV camera caught them having a final discussion in a Pun café the day before the fatal act, and Siya even told the police after her arrest that it was ‘easier to kill Ketan than tell the family’  (about her secret love affair.)
Even her father is shown telling a TV reporter from his hospital bed that she should hang if found guilty (The death penalty is legal in India,  but  often not carried out. It is reserved for aggravated murder, terrorism, and serial rape-murders. The most recent execution of death by hanging   took place in March 2020, when the four convicts in the 2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder were hanged).
There are videos vilifying Siya Gohal, showing her dancing with drink glass in hand. The latest twist is a claim that Siya married Chetan four months ago, and that Ketan suspected something was amiss. 
But, after the initial shock and the condemnation of Siya Gohal by the media, a more sober and objective analysis of the case seems to be building up. The media blitz can be attributed to the social standing of both victim and accused, and the location and manner of the alleged crime. In the pre-wedding video of Siya Gohal and Ketan Agarwal, they look like Indian movie stars. There is money, power and star quality involved. Even the state prosecutor for the case is a celebrity.
If victim and accuser were poor or even just middle class, the media uproar would have been much less. A Delhi cab driver was arrested for kidnapping, raping and killing an eleven-year-old girl  soon after the Agarwal case broke; but social media attention died out soon after and the case already seems to be forgotten. The Agarwal family has clout. The state government has named MP and celebrity lawyer Ujjwal Nikam as the public prosecutor, and the case has been fast-tracked.
The Agarwal family was planning to hold the wedding in a lavish Rajastan hotel, and two private jets were to be hired to transport the guests. Ketan is director of Success Group, a real estate company worth Rs. 600 crore (more than US$65 million).
Why should Siya murder her handsome, charming millionaire fiancé for someone middle class? This is a question not asked by any of the breathless TV reporters so eager to see her convicted. In the rush to pass judgement, most commentators seem to forget that there is actual witness to the crime. The evidence which seems so overwhelming  has so far been circumstantial.
If it’s indeed murder, one can only say that both the accused are entirely amateurish. Looks can hide the dark side of character but, if indeed the victim was murdered, it seems to be bungling of the first order, not the perfect crime. Some commentators have called Siya Gohal calculating and diabolical. They call it cold blooded, pre-meditated murder, not a crime of passion.
However that might be, Siya and her accomplice look incompetent from the start, from their visits to Logahad fort before the fateful day, or the fact that they were chatting at a café the day before, not noticing the CCTV camera beamed down on them. Would cold-blooded killers be so stupid as to leave a digital trail for the police?
But that is for a judge to decide, after studying all the evidence. The way it keeps piling up, the pile could reach Everest heights as the trial gets underway. Another recent twist was that Siya and Chetan were secretly married months before she got engaged to Chetan. The police are trying to trace the marriage certificate.
Ketan allegedly told Siya that he couldn’t marry her for another three years because he wanted financially stability, and she agreed to wait. But it sounds very strange that a millionaire inheritor to a family fortune has to  postpone marriage due to lack of financial stability. It was subsequently revealed that he gave Siya one crore Indian rupees (More than 35 million Sri Lankan rupees) for the wedding. These stories contradict each other. 
However this case turns out to be, one glaring fact  stands out – prejudice against women. Murder is most foul when committed by a woman. Vandana Shah, the Agarwal family’s lawyer, calls Siya Gohel a murderer in a TV interview, and says what Siya has done sets back women’s liberation in India by centuries.
How one murder can do that is hard to understand. Vandana Shah scoffs at the theory of family pressure, which may be used as a line of defense.
NDTV interviewed two leading Indian women psychologists. One, Dr. Varkha Chulani, says family pressure could have been a motivating factor. But the other, Dr. Jayanti Dutta, rejects the family pressure theory. She cites the money given by Chetan to Siya as proof there was no pressure, and calls Siya Goyal ‘very self-centred.’ Even the more sympathetic Dr. Chulani says Siya’s mistake was to underestimate the police.
But a gift of money by the fiancé and pressure from her own parents are two different things. Siya told the police under interrogation that she worried her family would not agree to her marrying her secret lover Chetan. The two families are related, and marriage between her and Ketan was arranged by a relative.
When it comes to choosing their future partners for life, people of all ages are very self-centred. That’s why they elope, go against their parents, abandon existing partners, and even  get disinherited. In wealthy families, threat of being disinherited is often used to keep children in line.
The reaction to the initial wave of hostility to Siya Goyal is now emerging. Novelist and columnist Shobhaa De elaborated on the pressure faced by young Indians – from family, peer groups and social media. Author and columnist Chetan Bhagat ignited a raw nerve when his column on the Ketan Agarwal case went viral; Vandana Shah found it highly objectionable. But Bhagat  said he saw many social media comments by young men and women about the pressure they are facing, and he was writing about  the regressive nature of Indian business families, with caste, religion and financial pressure imposed on their offspring.
He bluntly asks: “Are we pressuring our kids too much?” That is not an excuse for committing murder, but something worth thinking about.