Nithari killings: SC to hear pleas against Surendra Koli's acquittal on...

The Supreme Court on Monday posted for hearing on March 25, a batch of pleas against the acquittal of Surendra Koli, accused in the 2005-06 Noida Nithari killings. A bench of Justices BR Gavai and Augustine George Masih directed its registry to summon the trial court records in other connected matters expeditiously and supply its copies to the lawyers appearing in the matter.

At the outset, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), told the bench that the case was over the "very serious and gruesome" killings in Nithari, Uttar Pradesh. In 2024, the top court agreed to examine separate pleas filed by the CBI, Uttar Pradesh government and Pappu Lal, father of one of the victim girls, challenging the Allahabad High Court's order of acquitting businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surendra Koli. Mehta had earlier told the apex court that Koli was a serial killer who used to lure young girls and kill them.

He had said the killings were "gruesome" and there were accusations of cannibalism and the trial court had awarded the death penalty to Koli, but the same had been reversed by the Allahabad High Court. The Allahabad High Court had in October 2023 acquitted Pandher and his domestic help Surendra Koli in some of the cases concerning the Nithari killings and overturned the death penalty imposed on them by the trial court. It had acquitted Koli in 12 cases and Pandher in two cases, where they were earlier held guilty of murder and awarded the death penalty by the trial court in these cases.

The CBI had registered 16 cases against Koli and Pandher over the rape and killing of girls that had shocked the nation. The case came to public attention in December 2006, when skeletons were discovered in a drain near a house in Nithari village, Noida. Pandher was the owner of the house and Koli was his domestic help. Koli was made accused in all of the cases on various charges including murder, abduction, rape, and the destruction of evidence. However, Pandher was named in six of them. Koli was convicted of committing multiple rapes and murders of various girls and was sentenced to death in more than 10 cases.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from ANI)