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Supreme Court Of India Is The last remaining sentence in the heinous Nithari serial murder case was overturned. Ordered to release the main suspect Surendra Koli.
This decision concludes a India’s longest and most terrifying criminal sagas And this is a rare example of the Supreme Court using its extraordinary remedial powers to overturn its own final decision while the case remains unresolved.
A bench of Chief Justice BR Gavai and Justices Surya Kant and Vikram Nath accepted Mr Koli’s curative petition, a rare legal remedy that is used only when the court’s earlier decision is alleged to have caused serious injustice.
The court said it would be disproportionate and unjust to uphold his conviction in a single case, as he has already been acquitted in 12 other related cases arising from the same evidence. Hindustan Times,
Justice Nath, while delivering the judgement, said, “If the petitioner is not wanted in any other case, he should be released immediately. The jail superintendent should be immediately informed about this decision.”
Mr Koli’s case is linked to one of India’s most disturbing criminal investigations, which came to light in December 2006 after the human remains of children and young women were discovered near a house in Nithari, a village in Noida, a suburb of the capital Delhi.
The property belonged to businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, at whose residence Mr Koli worked as a domestic help.
Subsequent searches found 19 skeletons and other remains, sparking nationwide outrage.
Federal Investigation Agency of India, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) alleged that Mr. Koli lured children and young women from poor areas, sexually assaulted and murdered them, and, in some cases, engaged in acts of cannibalism. Mr Pandher was accused of involvement in certain crimes and trafficking offenses under Indian laws.
Between 2007 and 2009, the trial court convicted Mr. Koli on 13 counts and sentenced him to death. Mr Pandher was convicted in two cases.
However, the Allahabad High Court overturned all those convictions in October 2023, citing unreliable witness statements, procedural lapses and questionable seizures supported by valid disclosure statements under India’s Evidence Act – a provision that regulates when police seizures can be admitted as evidence.
The CBI and the victims’ families appealed to the Supreme Court, but in July 2024 the apex court dismissed all 14 appeals, upholding the High Court’s findings that the prosecution had failed to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Mr Koli was nevertheless kept in jail because a conviction – for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl – was still intact. That verdict, which was delivered by a trial court and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011, was commuted to life imprisonment by the High Court in 2015 due to the government’s delay in its decision on his mercy petition.
Hearing his curative petition in October, the Supreme Court said that the conviction in that last case was based only on a confession and the recovery of a kitchen knife – the same evidence that had already been rejected in other cases. The bench said that upholding the verdict would be a “travesty of justice”.