Pandher acquittal to be challenged in Supreme Court

NOIDA - The family of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar has said they would go to the Supreme Court against the Allahabad High Court acquitting businessman Moninder Singh Pandher in the rape and murder of the teen, one of the 19 victims of the sensational Nithari killings.

An outraged Dolly Haldar, the mother of the teen, stood outside Pandher’s D-45 bungalow in Noida’s Sector 31 and shouted slogans against the police and the Central Bureau of Investigation after the acquittal verdict came in Friday morning.

Crowds assembled at the spot and police was deployed at the residence, close to Nithari village where the victims came from, where Pandher and his domestic help Koli allegedly carried out the gruesome crimes.

Rimpa was one of the 19 young women and children from Nithari village in Noida area whose body parts were found in a drain behind the bungalow in December 2006. While Pandher has been acquitted, the high court upheld the conviction of Koli.

The high court passed the order in an appeal against a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) trial court that had awarded death to Pandher and Koli in the Haldar case.

Said Haldar’s lawyer Khalid Khan: In the Nithari serial killing and rape case, we will go to the Supreme court against the Allahabad High Court judgment.”

He said he had yet to go through the judgment but blamed the investigation agency for not presenting the evidence properly.

Haldar’s case was the first of the 19 cases of abduction, rape and murder of four women and 15 children, mostly girls, the CBI had probed in what are collectively termed the Nithari killings.

The CBI has filed chargesheets in 16 cases. They are being heard separately. While Koli has been charged with rape, abduction and murder in all the cases, Pandher is co-accused in six.