Nithari serial killing
Guwahati, Oct 17: Seventeen years after Nithari, a small village in Noida made headlines globally for the serial killings of children and women, the main accused, Surinder Koli, and his co-accused Moninder Singh Pandher were on Monday acquitted of all charges against them.
The court said that the prosecution failed to prove the guilt “beyond reasonable doubt” and that the investigation was botched up.
The two were earlier awarded the death penalty by the trial court. The decision came as a shock for families awaiting justice.
The verdict has come as a major blow to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The High Court canceled the death sentence that was awarded to the convicts by Ghaziabad's CBI court. A division bench of Justice Ashwini Kumar Mishra and Justice Sha Rizvi gave the order.
However, the court upheld the death sentence of Koli in one case and on the basis of delay, commuted the same in another case to life imprisonment.
Koli will continue to serve the life imprisonment awarded to him in the killing of a 14-year-old girl.
While Koli was handed death sentences in 12 cases earlier, Pandher too, had been sentenced to death in 2 cases by the trial courts.
It is believed that the infamous Nithari murders were committed between 2005 and 2006. The matter came to light when in December 2006, skeletons were found in an apartment.
