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SC issues notice over appeals challenging Nithari killer’s acquittal
The high court acquitted Surendra Koli in October 2023 saying the investigation was botched up and basic norms of collecting evidence were violated
The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice in response to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Uttar Pradesh government’s appeals challenging the October 2023 Allahabad high court order acquitting Surendra Koli in the case involving cannibalism, rape, and murder of girls between 2005 and 2007 in Noida’s Nithari.
The high court reversed a trial court’s judgment convicting Koli in 13 of the 16 cases. Koli’s employer Moninder Singh Pandher was convicted in two cases. The CBI took up the probe of the case in 2007. The trial court acquitted the accused in three out of the 16 cases.
A bench of justices BR Gavai and KV Viswanathan issued the notice and listed the petitions along with a pending appeal of the father of one of the victims challenging the high court order.
Solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, who appeared for CBI, said the accused is a serial killer and the case is gruesome involving cannibalism. He added Koli lured small girls, killed them, and ate them. “The trial court awarded death sentence and the HC [high court] acquitted.”
As per the prosecution, Koli enticed the victims on one pretext or the other before raping and killing them. It said he would chop the bodies, eat the torso, and throw the skull clothes and remaining part of the bodies in a drain. Police recovered 16 skulls, clothes, and slippers of the victims near the drain.
The high court said that the investigation was botched up and basic norms of collecting evidence were 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.”
Pandher was sentenced in two of the cases. The Supreme Court in 2011 confirmed capital punishment for Koli in one of the cases.
