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nHouse number D5, located between two larger and more modern buildings in a village in northern India, is an abandoned bungalow whose garden is now overgrown with vines. This abandoned house, owned by a local businessman, is talked about in hushed tones for its role in a horrific story that has yet to be concluded.
Almost two decades ago, Children and young women began to disappear There is no trace of this in this quiet village of Nithari, located about 20 km from the Indian capital DelhiIn the state of Uttar Pradesh. Desperate families scoured the nearby roads and repeatedly contacted the police, but to no avail. As the number of those disappeared increased, the total eventually reached 19., Fear spread among the local villagers and they started refusing to leave their homes after noon.
The horror deepened in the winter of 2006, when the dismembered remains of missing victims began surfacing in drains and sewers near the home of D5’s owner, businessman Moninder Singh Pandher. The discoveries confirmed what was emerging: one of India’s most horrific serial murder cases.
After a lengthy investigation, in 2009 a special court attached to India’s Federal Investigation Agency sentenced both Pandher and his domestic associate Surinder Koli to death for their alleged role in the gruesome murders. Koli faced charges of murder, rape, kidnapping and destroying evidence, while Pandher was accused of involvement in smuggling.
Koli was sentenced to death in 2011 for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. Nineteen separate cases were ultimately filed against the two men. But over the years the cases began to collapse and in 2023 a court acquitted Pandher citing insufficient evidence.
Koli was also acquitted in all the cases except one. He is in jail in connection with an earlier 15-year-old murder case. But India’s Supreme Court is now preparing to deliver its verdict on Koli’s petition to overturn his final conviction, and comments from the judges so far suggest it has a good chance of succeeding. If his plea is accepted, Koli will walk free after spending nearly two decades in prison.
Police have not publicly identified any other suspects in connection with the case.
After so many years of pain, the victims’ families say the uncertainty surrounding the conviction is causing them renewed worry and pain. For many people, the blame is now being put on the police for failing to provide them justice.
In its October 2023 judgment acquitting both Koli and Pandher in several Nithari cases, the Allahabad High Court of Uttar Pradesh said investigators had “blatantly violated basic norms of evidence collection”.
Koli’s conviction was based primarily on a confession and the recovery of a kitchen knife, which the court questioned on the sufficiency of the evidence. Now he has been acquitted in a total of 12 cases related to the same series of murders in the village,
In 2007, a federal inquiry committee probing the serial murders severely faulted the Uttar Pradesh Police for “gross negligence” in handling missing persons cases. The committee did not rule out organ trade as a possible motive behind the killings.
The body parts, packed in plastic bags, were found buried in Pandher’s backyard and drains. One victim, Pinky Sarkar, was identified by her “salwar suit and slippers” and “black hair clip”. According to reports, doctors said that the bodies were cut with “butcher-like precision”.
A total of 19 cases were registered against Pandher and Koli in 2007, but the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s top investigating agency, filed closure reports in three, citing lack of evidence. Police said it was impossible to determine the exact number of victims due to the nature of the remains discovered.
A Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India BR Gavai heard Koli’s plea in open court earlier this month.
The judges said Koli’s plea was “acceptable”, questioning why he was convicted in one case when he had already been acquitted in other cases based on the same evidence.
“Wouldn’t that be inconsistent?” the bench asked. “If on the same set of facts this court has acquitted him in other cases, and on the same evidence he has been convicted in this case – would that not be a travesty of justice?”
Curative petitions, a rare legal remedy devised by the Supreme Court in 2002, allow final review of convictions to correct any miscarriage of justice.
The court comments, which experts say point to a possible acquittal, have “devastated” victims’ families’ faith in the justice system. Independent This report contacted the office of CBI Director Praveen Sood with detailed questions, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
“We got the case opened but the police did not do their duty,” says Jhabbu Lal, father of the 10-year-old girl, whose clothes and slippers were found in the premises of the now infamous D5 bungalow.
He says, “Among the hundreds of skeletons found in the complex, our daughter’s skeleton was also found and it was later confirmed after DNA analysis.” Independent.
Sharing his outrage after the court’s comments, the 63-year-old father says: “We have lost all hope. There is no hope for justice from anyone except God.”
Lal says he “doesn’t care” about keeping Koli in jail. “When children of poor people are killed, why is only the poor man who worked as a domestic servant made the scapegoat, while his master (Pandher) was acquitted long ago?” he asks.
Pandher spent a total of 14 years behind bars after his arrest in 2006, being out on bail intermittently. He was charged in six cases related to the Nithari murder case and convicted in three cases by a lower court before he was acquitted by the Allahabad High Court. The bench of judges expressed “disappointment” at the “poor” investigation.
Justices Ashwini Kumar Mishra and Syed Aftab Hussain Rizvi said, “The prosecution failed to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt on the parameters of the case based on circumstantial evidence”.
At that time Pandher’s lawyer Manisha Bhandari told The Times of India Due to which he got relief from the order. “It was a wait of 17 years. The trial court’s decisions were influenced by the media trial and the Allahabad High Court (state court) corrected it. There has to be a balance in the reporting of the case after any crime.”
The media trial he referred to was gruesome and elaborate, with rumors of murder, cannibalism and necrophilia circulating in Indian media reports, fueling public anger.
Despite all this, Pandher has not returned to his bungalow after being released from jail. Nithari has changed beyond recognition since the time of the murders, transforming it from a dangerous and underdeveloped neighborhood into a sprawling locality with wide and well-lit roads amidst planned, gated societies. Only D5, which has grown from a single bungalow to terraced accommodation among new housing blocks, appears to have remained stable over time.
Jalil, 60, who has sold fruit in the area for more than three decades, says the murders haunted the area at the time, with the belief that the abductions were most likely to have taken place during the cool heat of the afternoon. “By 12 noon, everyone would go home and not come back until 5 pm or even try to get out of their homes because anyone could be killed or kidnapped.”
“If my wife had to go from one place to another I would go with her. It didn’t matter what the distance or the time of day. We all knew, women and children in particular were regularly attacked, assaulted, disappeared and kidnapped.”
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Lala Ram, 65, who irons and cleans clothes in the area, corroborates this account.
“The conditions were really very unsafe,” says Ram, who moved to Nithari in 2003. We all feared for our safety. And then immediately after, bodies and skeletons of children and women were found.
Lal describes an atmosphere of police indifference while he tried to report his 10-year-old daughter missing.
“I was running from pillar to post at that time asking the police to take the case seriously. My daughter was 10 years old and had been missing for a year and seven months. I just thought, maybe someone had kidnapped her and sold her on GB Road or some other place,” he says, referring to a red-light district in the capital. “The police did not take the case of missing children seriously at all,” he recalls.
“Even after the skeleton was found, I called the media to ensure that my daughter’s case was not ignored,” he says, accusing the police of their “lax” investigation.
“Officials in our country only listen to those who have money. We have no rights. But they own the system.”
When asked what he remembered about his 10-year-old self, he said: “What should I remember about him? How long will I remember him when no one can do anything right by him.”