LUCKNOW: In a major turnaround, the prime accused in the Nithari serial killing case, Surinder Koli, and his employer Moninder Singh Pandher, both facing capital punishment, were acquitted by the Allahabad High Court on Monday. A Ghaziabad trial court had sentenced Koli to death in 12 cases related to serial killings, which had come to light in Noida in 2005-2006. Pandher was awarded death sentence in two cases.
But the high court exonerated Koli in all 12 cases and acquitted Pandher in both the cases. As such, all death sentences stand cancelled. Koli’s capital punishment in a different case was earlier commuted to life, and so he will continue to serve the term. As for Pandher, he can walk free.
The HC bench observed that the investigation into the case was botched up and basic norms of collecting evidence were brazenly violated. “It appears to us that the investigation opted for the easy course of implicating a poor servant of the house by demonizing him, without taking due care of probing more serious aspects of possible involvement of organized activity of organ trading,” said the judges.
The case involving a series of kidnappings, murders, alleged rapes, cannibalism and destruction of evidence had left the nation stunned in 2006. The CBI filed chargesheets in 16 of them. In three FIRs, chargesheets weren’t filed because the “offence couldn’t be ascertained”, said sources.