17 years after the Nithari serial murders which is one of the most gruesome cases of 2006 in which women and children were killed, the Allahabad High Court acquitted both the accused who were convicted of rape and murder. The 2 accused include Surinder Koli of all charges in 12 cases and the co-accused Moninder Singh Pandher was also acquitted in 2 cases and both their death sentences cancelled.
The serial killings took place at Moninder Pandher’s home in Nithari area of Uttar Pradesh’s Noida between 2005 and 2006 where Surinder Koli worked as a help, which was dubbed by many as the “house of horrors” after the revelations. It was alleged that Koli would lure the children into the house, where he and Pandher raped and murdered them. The police had said that the accused would chop up the bodies of the victims and throw them in drains to destroy the evidence. The discovery of body parts in the drain led to a intense investigation which revealed more bodies and brought forward disturbing allegations of murder, mutilation and cannibalism.
Timeline of events:
The case was taken over by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), who filed 19 cases against Pandher and Koli in 2007. After this Surinder Koli was found guilty of rape and murder of several children at his employer’s house. Koli had earlier confessed to having sex with the dead victims and also eating their body parts because of which he and his co-accused was convicted for rape and murder in 2009. Both the accused Moninder Singh Pandher and Surinder Koli were also given a death penalty as their case was classified as ‘rarest of rare’.
Later in 2014, the accused filed mercy petitions which were rejected by then-President Pranab Mukherjee. However, the court in September of that year stayed their execution. In September 2014, the Supreme Court commuted Koli’s death sentence to life imprisonment.
In 2015, a division bench of Allahabad High Court comprising of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice P K S Baghel, commuted the death sentence of Surinder Koli to life imprisonment on the grounds of ‘inordinate delay’ in deciding the mercy petition.
Then in 2017, in a case of rape and murder of a 25-year-old help, a CBI special court in Ghaziabad awarded a death sentence to Moninder Singh Pandher and Surendra Koli. This was the ninth among all the cases in which Koli was convicted. This was also the third case in which both Pandher and Koli were convicted by the court.
Recently in 2022, Surendra Koli was awarded the death penalty by a special CBI court in Ghaziabad in connection with murder charges against the accused. The judge also awarded seven years’ imprisonment to Moninder Singh Pandher in the case, besides a fine of ₹62,000 on Koli and ₹4,000 on Pandher, officials said.
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