Siya Goyal's 'lawyer' sues her brother for Rs 10 crore over defamatory remarks

The alleged murder of Pune-based realtor Ketan Agarwal has taken a fresh legal turn after advocate Aashutosh Srivastava sent a Rs 10 crore defamation notice to Sahil Goyal, the brother of prime accused Siya Goyal, accusing him of making false and defamatory allegations that damaged his professional reputation.

The development comes days after a dispute erupted over who is legally representing Siya during court proceedings in the high-profile murder case.

On Monday, Siya Goyal and her co-accused and boyfriend, Chetan Chaudhary, were produced before the Vadgaon Maval court after their initial police custody ended. The court extended their police custody for a second time till July 3 to allow investigators to continue the probe.

During the hearing, confusion arose after advocate Aashutosh Srivastava appeared before the court claiming to represent Siya and submitted a vakalatnama purportedly bearing her signature. However, Siya told the court that advocate Vipul Dushing, not Srivastava, was her lawyer. Her family also maintained that Dushing had been officially appointed to represent her.

Ahead of the hearing, Sahil Goyal had publicly alleged that Srivastava was neither authorised nor appointed by the family to represent Siya. He claimed the family had filed an affidavit before the court clarifying the issue and alleged that Srivastava may have obtained Siya's signature "by deceit". Sahil also accused the advocate of issuing threats to the family.

Following these allegations, Srivastava served Sahil with a legal notice seeking Rs 10 crore in damages.

According to the notice, Srivastava alleged that Sahil made "false, baseless, defamatory and misleading" statements against him, causing serious harm to his professional standing. The notice demands that Sahil immediately withdraw the allegations, issue a public apology and provide a written assurance that he will not repeat such statements in the future.

Speaking on the controversy, Srivastava maintained that his legal team had approached Siya directly and that she had voluntarily authorised them to represent her.

"Our team met Siya Goyal. She required legal assistance, so she signed the vakalatnama in our favour. Siya Goyal is an adult and is fully capable of making her own decisions. Sahil Goyal's statement is incorrect because we never spoke to him, we dealt directly with Siya. She spoke to us and executed a vakalatnama in our favour, valid up to the Bombay High Court. The document bears her signatures," Srivastava said.

The allegations contained in the legal notice are Srivastava's claims. Sahil Goyal has not yet issued any public response to the notice.

Meanwhile, police have continued to press for custodial interrogation of Siya and Chaudhary, saying the investigation has revealed that the duo had earlier visited Lohagad Fort to identify the spot from where Agarwal was allegedly pushed to his death.

The prosecution also told the court that investigators are trying to recover deleted digital evidence, verify the reconstructed sequence of events with Chaudhary, identify people who interacted with the accused at the fort based on CCTV footage, recover Agarwal's missing passport allegedly discarded by Siya during a trip, and confront the accused with newly identified witnesses.

Police allege that 20-year-old Siya conspired with her 22-year-old boyfriend, Chaudhary, to kill Agarwal because she did not want to marry him and believed calling off the wedding would bring disrepute to her family. Both have been arrested on charges of conspiring to murder the realtor by pushing him off a cliff at Lohagad Fort in Pune district.

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