The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has announced plans to contest the acquittal of Moninder Singh Pandher and Surendra Koli in the Nithari killings case at the Supreme Court. The Allahabad High Court had acquitted Pandher and Koli, citing a lack of evidence to prove their guilt in the 2006 Nithari killings. The CBI’s decision to challenge the acquittal underscores the ongoing legal battle surrounding one of India’s most notorious criminal cases.
NEW DELHI: Recently, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is preparing to challenge the Allahabad High Court’s decision to acquit Surendra Koli and his former employer, Moninder Singh Pandher, in the 2006 Nithari killings case at the Supreme Court. The CBI has obtained all pertinent documents from the Ghaziabad court for this purpose.
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Background
Last year, on October 17, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli and Pandher, stating that the prosecution failed to establish their guilt. This verdict came almost 17 years after the gruesome discovery of human remains, including skulls and skeletal fragments, along with pieces of clothing belonging to missing girls found in bags near businessman Pandher’s residence in Nithari village, adjacent to Delhi.
“The investigation otherwise is botched up and basic norms of collecting evidence have been brazenly violated. It appears to us that the investigation opted for the easy course of implicating a poor servant of the house by demonising him, without taking due care of probing more serious aspects of possible involvement of organised activity of organ trading.”
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Koli, who worked as a domestic helper at Pandher’s residence, was acquitted in 12 cases related to the 2006 killings, while Pandher was acquitted in two cases. Initially, both were sentenced to death by a CBI court in Ghaziabad in 2009 for charges including rape, murder, and tampering with evidence. In ten of these cases, Koli was the sole accused, while in two, he was charged alongside Pandher.
After studying the case documents and taking all legal opinions, the CBI has decided to challenge the two cases in which Koli has been named as an accused and Pandher is co-accused and the 10 cases in which Koli is the only accused. “
All the certified copies have been procured from the Ghaziabad Court and it’s been a mammoth exercise. Since all the documents are in Hindi, we have hired an agency to translate them into English. We are going to challenge their acquittal in the coming days in the Supreme Court,”
the CBI said.
While acquitting Koli and Pandher in a case in which both were sentenced to death, a bench of Justices Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Syed Aftab Husain Rizvi had in 2023 pulled up the investigators.
“Upon evaluation of the evidence, on the touchstone of fair trial guaranteed to an accused under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, we hold that prosecution has failed to prove the guilt of accused… beyond a reasonable doubt,”
the bench said.
