The Supreme Court today upheld the acquittal of Surendra Koli and Moninder Singh Pandher, the accused in the 2005-2006 Noida serial murder cases, commonly referred to as the Nithari killings.
A bench of Chief Justice of India BR Gavai, Justice Satish Chandra Sharma, and Justice K. Vinod Chandran dismissed a total of 14 appeals by the CBI as well as victims' families challenging the Allahabad High Court order setting aside their conviction and death sentence.
"It is rather complimentary of the judges of the High Court for writing such a judgment. There must be a lot of media pressure and all that. By withstanding such pressure they have given such a...The trial court sorry to say must have been on the basis of media trial", Justice Gavai remarked, adding that the appellants failed to point out a single perversity in the High Court judgment.
During the hearing, the bench observed that the area behind the Pandher's house where the remains of the victims were found was not exclusively accessible by the accused. “The law is that it has to be recovered from the place exclusively known to the accused alone and accessible by the accused alone”, Justice Gavai said.
The Nithari killings came to light in December 2006, when skeletal remains of several children and women were found in a drain behind Pandher's residence in Noida's Nithari area. Koli was employed as a domestic worker in the household. The CBI registered 16 cases, charge-sheeting Koli in all for murder, abduction, rape, and destruction of evidence. Pandher was initially charge-sheeted in one case for immoral trafficking, but was later summoned in five more cases by a Ghaziabad court on petitions filed by the families of several victims.
The CBI alleged that Koli murdered several girls, dismembered their bodies, and disposed of the remains in the backyard of Pandher's house. A total of 19 victims' remains were reportedly recovered. The batch of appeals before the Supreme Court, mostly filed by the CBI and State authorities, challenged the October 2023 judgment of the Allahabad High Court, which had acquitted Surendra Koli and co-accused Moninder Singh Pandher for lack of evidence.
The High Court observed that the possibility of organ trade being the cause of killings in Nithari was not probed by the CBI even when the resident of the adjoining house had been arrested earlier in case of a kidney scam. Koli had earlier been convicted and sentenced to death in 12 cases, while Pandher was convicted in two.
The counsel for Koli submitted that the case was actually one of organ-trading, misrepresented by the prosecution as one of cannibalism and sexual deviance. He highlighted the absence of blood-stained clothes, murder weapons, or torsos of the victims and pointed out that the recovered body parts had been cut with surgical precision.
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