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SC allows open court hearing to Nithari killings convict Koli’s challenge
Koli filed a curative petition on August 30, a month after the Supreme Court on July 30 held him innocent in 12 cases related to the Nithari killings
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed an open court hearing to Nithari killings convict Surendra Koli’s challenge to its sole order of conviction in 2011 after he was acquitted in 12 cases of rape and murder involving nearly a dozen girls between 2005 and 2007.
Koli filed a curative petition on August 30, a month after the Supreme Court on July 30 held him innocent in 12 cases related to the Nithari killings, concluding that the prosecution failed to prove his guilt and noted procedural flaws in the investigation.
Advocate Payoshi Roy appeared before the bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai and Justice Vinod K Chandran for an urgent hearing on the curative petition. “In 12 cases, he has been acquitted. He is still in jail due to the one case in which he was convicted. His review petition had earlier been dismissed. A curative petition has now been filed.”
The bench said the judges who passed the 2011 order have retired. “We will assign a bench.”
A curative petition is the last judicial remedy available to a litigant to seek reversal of a judgment of the court, and is heard in chambers. The scope for considering the curative plea is limited. It can be entertained only if the litigant points out that the court did not hear the party before passing an order, or there was a ground for apprehension of bias in passing the judgment, or any abuse of process of law resulting in the judgment adversely affecting the litigant.
The court dismissed Koli’s review petition after an open court hearing on October 28, 2014. It sentenced him to death while upholding his conviction. The Allahabad high court in 2015 commuted his death sentence to a life term due to the delay in deciding his mercy plea.
In 2007, skeletal remains were discovered from a drain near the house where Koli worked in Nithari village in Noida. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) concluded that Koli lured girls to the house where they were sexually assaulted and killed. He was accused of cannibalism. A trial court convicted Koli in 13 cases and his employer, Moninder Singh Pandher, in two. Pandher was later acquitted in all cases.
