Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, co-accused in the Nithari killings of 2006, was absolved of charges in one of the cases by the Allahabad high court (HC) on Friday.
The HC set aside his death sentence handed by a trial court earlier citing lack of evidence, but upheld the capital punishment handed to his domestic help Surinder Koli.
The two were sentenced in February by a special Ghaziabad court for the murder of a 14-year-old girl, Rimpa Halder, one of the 19 young women and children from Nithari village in Noida. Rimpa’s body parts were dug out from a drain behind Pandher’s bungalow in December 2006. She had gone missing from her house in February 2005.
The CBI had given a clean chit to Pandher in its charge-sheet stating he was not in Nithari when the alleged incident took place. A CBI spokesperson said: “We haven’t received the court order yet. The future course of action will be decided only after we study the judgment and consult our legal department.”
A bench of justices Imtiyaz Murtaza and KN Pandey observed: “No evidence has been placed on record to show that Pandher was guilty… From the prosecution evidence it is proved that Pandher was in Australia (at the time of Rimpa’s murder). The sessions judge had relied upon the confessional statement of Koli and according to his statement he had committed the murder of Haldar and at that time no one was present in the house.”
The Nithari killings were discovered in December 2006 following investigations into the disappearance of several children from the village. The case hit international headlines and created mass outcry against the gruesome murder of children.The CBI had filed charge-sheets in 16 cases, being heard separately. While Koli has been charged with rape, abduction and murder in all the cases, Pandher is co-accused in six.
The HC, while upholding the death sentence of Koli, who had admitted to murdering Rimpa, observed that the crime committed by him was “gruesome, heinous and cold-blooded”, but disagreed with the trial court’s death sentence for Pandher, who was not charge-sheeted by the CBI.
GS Chaturvedi, senior counsel and amicus curiae in the case, said that the verdict may have a bearing on the other cases as the evidence is similar. Pandher’s son Karandeep Singh expressed delight over the acquittal and said he hoped to get “justice in the remaining cases related to this matter”. Pandher’s lawyer Monisha Bhandari said she will try for his bail in view of the verdict. Chaturvedi said he hoped that Koli would file an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court.
