After 19 long years, the Nithari serial killings case has finally come to a close, but with no convictions.
Surendra Koli, one of the primary accused in the 2006 serial killings, was set free with immediate effect.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court set aside Koli’s conviction and death sentence in the rape and murder of a teenage girl, one of the last remaining cases that came out of the ghastly incident. He has already been acquitted in the previous 12 cases.
2006 Nithari killings case
The Nithari killings came to light in 2006, after the skeletal remains of 8 children were discovered from a drain near businessman Moninder Singh Pandher’s house in Noida in December. Koli worked at Pandher’s house.
Further diggings were then undertaken near the house, leading to the recovery of more skeletal remains.
Most of these remains belonged to poor children and young women who had gone missing from the area.
This led to the arrest of Pandher and Koli in the same month. It was alleged that Koli killed the girls and chopped the bodies before throwing them away. Even cannibalism was suspected.
Following this, both were awarded the death penalty by a special CBI court in Ghaziabad.
SC finds evidence inadmissible
But on October 16, 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli in 12 cases and Pandher in two.
Koli then filed a curative petition against him in the last case, which also led to his acquittal on Tuesday.
Accepting his plea, a bench headed by Chief Justice BR Gavai found that the evidence produced against Koli was inadmissible.
The bench observed that convicting Koli would amount to a “manifest miscarriage of justice” when he had already been acquitted in 12 other connected cases arising from the same set of facts and evidence.
