Pandher acquitted for want of evidence, Koli's sentence upheld

Allahabad, Sep 11 (PTI) Noida businessman Moninder
Singh Pandher was Friday acquitted for want of evidence in one
of the Nithari serial killings cases of young girls by the
Allahabad High Court which upheld the death sentence handed
down to his domestic help Surinder Koli.

The order was passed by a division bench comprising
Justices Imtiyaz Murtaza and Kashi Nath Pandey, on an appeal
by 52-year-old Pandher and 38-year-old Koli, who had
challenged the death sentence awarded to them on February 13,
this year by the trial court in Ghaziabad.
The judges, while allowing the appeal of Pandher and
dismissing that of Koli, made it clear that the "findings
recorded by them were only confined to the murder of
14-year-old Rimpa Haldar.

They made it clear that this judgement will not affect
decisions in other Nithari cases by the trial court.

The court, while upholding the death sentence of Koli,
who had admitted to have killed the girl, observed that the
crime committed by him was "gruesome, heinous and
cold-blooded" and "we would not forebear from expressing that
the accused Surendra Koli is a menace to the society".

"The depraved and brutish acts of Koli call for only
one sentence and that is death sentence. We agree with the
reasoning of the sessions judge awarding death sentence and
affirm the same awarded to Koli," the bench observed.

The cases came to light in December 2006 when the
police raided Pandher's house following complaints by
villagers that several of their children had disappeared.

The duo were arrested for the murder of a call girl
Payal and later a total of 19 cases were registered by the
police after human skulls, bones and clothes belonging to
young girls were recovered from the house.

The court, however, disagreed with the trial court's
decision to award death sentence to Pandher, who was not
chargesheeted by the CBI and whom the sessions judge had
summoned invoking section 319 of CrPC.

Pandher's son Karandeep Singh, who was present in
the High Court, said he was now looking forward to "justice in
the remaining cases against his father".

The High Court, he said, had sustained CBI's
chargesheet and "we are quite happy about that".

Pandher's lawyer Manisha Bhandari said that she will
try for bail for her client in view of the verdict.

None of the family members of Koli or Haldar was
present in court.

The High Court bench declined to remand the case
against Pandher for retrial under Section 319, as requested by
the complainant's counsel, saying, "We converge to the
irresistible view that there is no evidence on record against
him".

The judges noted that the trial court had summoned
Pandher mainly on the ground that a number of killings had
taken place at his Noida residence from where an axe was also
recovered at his instance.

The court pointed out that Koli had, in his
confessional statement, said that he had killed Haldar with a
knife, not an axe, at a time when Pandher was abroad and no
one else was present in the house.

"It appears that the sessions judge reckoned with the
circumstance of the lascivious habit of (Pandher) of bringing
in call girls (to his house)," the court remarked.

"We can fully understand that though the case,
superficially viewed, bears an ugly look so as to prima facie
shock the conscience of any court, yet, suspicion, however
great it may be, cannot take the place of legal proof. A moral
conviction, however strong and genuine, cannot amount to a
legal conviction supported by law," the court observed.

Both Pandher and Koli had been granted death penalty
for the rape and murder of Haldar, resident of a village in
Nithari on the outskirts of Noida. She had gone missing on
February 8, 2005. A complaint was lodged in this connection
with the local police by her father on July 20, 2005.
The Nithari killings had led to a huge public outcry
following which the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh
Mulayam Singh Yadav had handed over the case to CBI. PTI NAC
PMR