The Hindu : National : Pandher acquitted, death confirmed for Koli

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 12, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

National

National

Pandher acquitted, death confirmed for Koli

— Photo: PTI

File photo of Rimpa Haldar

Allahabad: Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, whose house at Noida was the scene of horrific rape and killings of several young girls and women nearly three years ago, was on Friday acquitted in one of the 19 cases by the Allahabad High Court. It, however, upheld the death sentence for his domestic help, Surinder Koli.

The verdict was given by a Bench comprising Justices Imtiyaz Murtaza and Kashi Nath Pandey, on an appeal by Pandher (52) and Koli (38), who had challenged the death sentence awarded to them on February 13 this year by the trial court in Ghaziabad.

The judges made it clear that the “findings recorded by them were confined to the murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar, one of the 19 victims in the 2006 serial killings.

Met with anger

While the acquittal was welcomed by Pandher’s son Karandeep, it was met with anger by Rimpa Haldar’s parents and other locals at Noida who targeted the media.

The judges made it clear that this judgment would not affect decisions in the other Nithari cases before the trial court.

“Gruesome”

The court observed that the crime committed by Koli, who admitted to have killed the girl, was “gruesome, heinous and cold-blooded.”

“We would not forbear from expressing that the accused Surendra Koli is a menace to society,” it said.

“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 in awarding the 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 was arrested for the murder of a call girl 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 High Court, however, disagreed with the trial court’s decision to award the death sentence to Pandher, who was not chargesheeted by the CBI and whom the sessions judge had summoned invoking Section 319 of the Cr.PC.

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

The High Court declined to remand the case against Pandher for retrial under Section 319, as requested by the complainant’s counsel, saying, “We converge with 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 he killed Haldar with a knife, not an axe, at a time when Pandher was abroad and no one else was present in the house. — PTI

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National