A view of the Supreme Court of India.
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
The Supreme Court on Wednesday (August 14, 2024) agreed to hear a fresh plea filed by the CBI challenging the Allahabad High Court’s verdict that acquitted Surendra Koli in the sensational 2006 Nithari serial killings case.
A Bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan tagged the CBI’s plea with some other petitions pending in the apex court against the High Court order of October 16, 2023.
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On July 19, the apex court had agreed to hear separate pleas filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Uttar Pradesh government against the High Court verdict. It had also issued a notice and sought a response from Koli on the petitions.
The apex court had in May agreed to hear a plea filed by the father of one of the victims challenging the High Court’s verdict acquitting Koli in one of the cases.
In this case, Moninder Singh Pandher was acquitted by the sessions court while Koli was awarded the death penalty on September 28, 2010.
The High Court had acquitted domestic help Pandher and his employer Koli in the case in which they were facing a death sentence, holding that the prosecution failed to prove the guilt “beyond reasonable doubt” and that the investigation was “botched up”.
Reversing the death sentence given to Koli in 12 cases and Pandher in two cases, the High Court had noted that the prosecution had failed to prove the guilt of both the accused “beyond reasonable doubt, on the settled parameters of a case based on circumstantial evidence” and the probe was “nothing short of a betrayal of public trust by responsible agencies”.
Pandher and Koli were charged with rape and murder and sentenced to death in the killings that horrified the nation with their details of sexual assault, brutal murder and hints of possible cannibalism.
Also read | Nithari killings: Noida residents’ body to move SC against Allahabad HC order
The High Court had allowed multiple appeals filed by Koli and Pandher, who had challenged the death sentence awarded by a Central Bureau of Investigation court in Ghaziabad.
In all, 19 cases had been lodged against Pandher and Koli in 2007. The CBI had filed closure reports in three cases due to lack of evidence. In the remaining 16 cases, Koli was earlier acquitted in three and his death sentence in one was commuted to life.
The sensational killings came to light with the discovery of the skeletal remains of eight children from a drain behind Pandher’s house at Nithari in Noida, bordering the National Capital, on December 29, 2006.
Further digging and searches of drains in the area around the house led to the recovery more skeletal remains. Most of these remains were those of poor children and young women who had gone missing from the area.
Within 10 days, the CBI had taken over the case and its search resulted in the recovery of more remains.
