Pandher cleared in one Nithari case, victim’s family to move apex court (Roundup)

ALLAHABAD/NOIDA - Moninder Singh Pandher, a businessman and key accused in the brutal killings of at least 18 young girls and boys in Nithari in Noida, was Friday acquitted by the Allahabad High court in the rape and murder of a teenager. His family was happy with the ruling, but the victim’s parents said they would move the Supreme Court.

While the court gave a clean chit to Pandher, who was awarded death sentence by the special trial court of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), it upheld the same sentence on his domestic servant Surinder Koli, allegedly an equal partner in the gruesome killings that came to light in 2006 and shocked the nation.

The bench of Justice Imtiaz Murtaza and Justice K.N. Pandey made it clear that Pandher’s acquittal was only with respect to the rape and murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar, a maid who had disappeared from his house about four years ago. The remaining 18 cases against Pandher and his servant would continue, the court clarified.

The court gave Pandher a reprieve on his plea that he was away in Australia when Haldar was raped and murdered in the Noida Sector 31 house that belonged him.

Significantly, the CBI had also given Pandher a clean chit after the Uttar Pradesh police handed over the case to the agency.

The judgment brought relief for Pandher’s family. His son Karandeep Pandher said: “I am very happy. Finally, justice has prevailed. An innocent man has been acquitted.”

“It is a happy day. We will celebrate the day my father is out,” he told IANS.

However, Rimpa Haldar’s mother Dolly Haldar was among the hundreds of people who stood outside Pandher’s D-45 bungalow in Nithari in Noida’s Sector 31 and shouted slogans against the police and the CBI.

Said Haldar’s lawyer Khalid Khan: “We will go to the Supreme court against the Allahabad High Court judgment.”

Pandher, 52, and Koli, 38, had challenged the death sentences awarded to them on Feb 13 this year by the trial court in Ghaziabad.

The high court, while upholding the death sentence of Koli, who had admitted to have killed the girl, observed that the crime committed by him was “gruesome, heinous and cold-blooded” and “we would not forebear from expressing that the accused Surendra Koli is a menace to society”.

It observed: “The depraved and brutish acts of Koli call for only one sentence and that is death sentence. We agree with the reasoning of the sessions judge awarding death sentence and affirm the same award to Koli.”

According to the prosecution, Koli was suffering from necrophilia (habit to have sex with the dead) and had even eaten body parts of his victims.

The killings came to light with the discovery of skeletal remains of children from a drain behind Pandher’s bungalow in late December 2006 leading to the arrest of Pandher and Koli.

The conviction in the murder of 14-year-old Haldar, one of the 19 victims who were sexually exploited and murdered at Pandher’s house at Nithari, was the first one to be pronounced against the duo.

While Koli was found guilty by the court under various sections of Indian Penal Code for murder and rape, Pandher was convicted on the same charges along with Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy).