Nithari: In the shadowed bylanes of Noida's Nithari village, the veil of police apathy was torn apart 18 years ago on 29 December 2006. For over a year, families had trudged to the local police station, desperate for answers about their missing loved ones, only to be met with indifference and dismissive platitudes. “She must have eloped with a lover,” they’d say as they shrugged off families grieving their missing young girls.

That day, the police turned inside out an enclosed area at the back of a house and dredged a drain next to it. They unearthed 15 skulls and an array of bones – silent witnesses to the horrors inflicted on the missing children and women whose pleas for help had been long dismissed. The remains of four more people were recovered later as the investigation into the murders progressed.

At the centre of this macabre discovery was D5, one of the bungalows on the main road to the village. The media was quick to dub it “the house of horrors” after police allegedly recovered victims’ clothing, knives and bodily remains – from the house, the enclosed space behind, and in the drain at its front.

Moninder Singh Pandher, the businessman owner of the bungalow, and Surendra Koli, his domestic worker were swiftly labelled the culprits. They were slapped with death sentences – Pandher in two and Koli in thirteen cases. Yet, as investigations into Nithari murders unravelled and the cases entered the courts, disturbing inconsistencies began to surface, casting doubt on the actions of the police and the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) that took up the cases later. 

Nearly two decades after the winter of 2006, The Reporters’ Collective has picked up the threads of the Nithari cases again, revealing a deeply flawed investigation riddled with inconsistencies and unanswered questions. 

We relied entirely on publicly available judgments, examining nearly 3,000 pages of case files, related to the Nithari murders that were heard in the trial courts, the High Court of Allahabad, and the Supreme Court. This combined with conversations with legal experts and residents of Nithari revealed a troubling picture – of a botched and suspect investigation, dubious and shifting accusations by police and CBI, and the alleged scapegoating of a poor domestic worker with shaky evidence, torture, and a forced confession. 

This renewed scrutiny exposes the systemic failures that have long obscured the truth, eventually confirmed by a court years later. 

On 16 October 2023, the High Court of Allahabad found Pandher and Koli innocent in all the cases against them, except one where Koli is still serving lifelong imprisonment.

With the acquittals, the families of the victims have been pulled back to ground zero – there is no sound proof of who killed their loved ones. 

The Nithari investigation has raised more questions than it answered: Who killed over a dozen children? Was Koli, a poor domestic worker, incriminated to let off the real murderers? Did police inaction and botched investigation hint at complicity? All these questions remain to this day and come up regularly in conversations with the residents of Nithari.

Lid off a serial murder

Starting early 2005, many residents of Nithari village pleaded with the police to find their missing family members. Yet, their cries were met with indifference.

It took the persistence of one grieving father, Nand Lal, to set the wheels of investigation, and justice, in motion. He forced the police to listen and act.

Nand Lal’s 20-year-old daughter, Payal Sarkar, went missing in May 2006. Frustrated by police inaction, he filed a formal complaint after three months. The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Gautam Buddh Nagar, the district in which this Noida village falls, ordered the police to investigate.

It was this investigation that took the lid off the serial murders leading to the arrests of Koli and Pandher in December 2006.

The police initially claimed that Koli had confessed to killing Payal and directed them to her remains, dumped in an open space between two bungalows, D5 and D6, and a state-owned land in Noida’s Sector 31. As the investigation progressed and body parts were being recovered, Koli allegedly admitted to murdering several others. Both men, investigating agencies maintained, reportedly pointed out where biological remains were to be found.

But as the case unfolded and claims kept changing, the narrative began to unravel.

Initiated by the Uttar Pradesh Police, the case was later transferred to the CBI in January 2007. 

While the CBI exonerated Pandher, it cast Koli as a psychopathic and sexually perverted cannibal killer, weaving a grisly tale of luring, strangling, dismembering, attempting to rape, and allegedly consuming his victims. He confessed to these crimes in a much-publicised video confession that became central to the murder investigations.

As the trials advanced, the evidence against both men faltered. Koli’s confession, the basis of the cases against him, could not stand the test of the law.

In February 2009, a trial court sentenced both Koli and Pandher to death for the murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar. The High Court of Allahabad, which is mandated to confirm or reject death sentences meted out by trial courts, acquitted Pandher but upheld Koli’s death penalty in September 2009. This decision was later affirmed by the Supreme Court in February 2011 while dismissing Koli’s appeal against it.

Over time, after the higher courts convicted him in the Rimpa Haldar case, Koli was given death sentences in 12 other cases, and Pandher in two.

As these cases reached the High Court of Allahabad, citing shoddy investigations and insufficient evidence, it acquitted Koli in all 12 of them, and Pandher in the two against him. 

It said that it was “disheartening” how the prosecution had handled aspects of arrest, confession and evidence recovery in a “casual and perfunctory” manner.

The trials revealed a darker reality: a “botched up” investigation rife with custodial torture, forced confession, contradictory stands, and judicial neglect. Koli, a Dalit domestic worker, endured a system that denied him adequate legal aid and built a case on shaky grounds.

Crucial aspects of the case such as the possible involvement of the owner of the adjacent bungalow – a doctor who was previously convicted in a kidney racket –  were ignored. This, even after the Ministry of Women and Child Development pointed out the glaring gap, suggesting that the way in which body parts were cut showed “surgical precision” which only a professional could possess.

Instead, Koli’s alleged confessions became the backbone of a narrative that crumbled under closer scrutiny.

We sought comments from the Uttar Pradesh Police and the CBI on the lapses in their investigation highlighted by the High Court of Allahabad. This story will be updated once we receive a response from either.

We also made multiple attempts to contact Koli’s defence lawyers and mailed them our questions but did not receive a response.

A shifting narrative

The police claimed they arrested Koli and Pandher on 29 December 2006. Koli, they said, confessed to Payal Sarkar’s murder and led them to the recovery of body parts.

However, court documents note that Koli might have been arrested two days earlier, on 27 December. Witness testimony further muddied the timeline. Pan Singh, Pandher’s driver, told the court that Koli had been in his native village in Uttarakhand when the police came looking for him on 25 December. He was brought back to Nithari by him and Pandher and dropped off at the police station on 27 December. 

The prosecution’s inability to establish the date of the arrest exposed glaring lapses. No arrest record was produced, and witness accounts on Koli’s arrest did not add up.

But why does the date of arrest matter? Timing mattered because Indian law prohibits detaining an individual for more than 24 hours without judicial approval. 

If Koli was indeed arrested on 27 December, his production before the magistrate after over 70 hours violated Article 22 of the Constitution which offers protection against arrest and detention to Indian citizens. 

This was not all. Irregularities extended to the recovery of remains. By the time Koli supposedly led police to the site next to bungalow D5, digging had already begun, with locals and media swarming the area. 

The sole eyewitness, therefore, did not see Koli pointing to the places to be dug for skulls, bones and clothes of victims, a fact highlighted by the High Court.

The High Court noted that authorities had “miserably failed to prove” Koli’s involvement in locating the remains.

The police’s narrative also kept shifting. Initially, both Koli and Pandher were implicated. In December 2006, UP police claimed “both the accused led to the recovery of skulls”.

In its applications for extending their custody, the CBI also stated that both accused “had jointly admitted to kidnapping, raping and murdering” the victim.

But later, the narrative changed. Pandher was absolved, and Koli became the sole focus.

The Allahabad High Court, while acquitting Koli and Pandher, criticised this abrupt shift, stating that the “the guilt was fastened exclusively” on Koli by the investigating agency.

Confession under duress

Koli’s confession, recorded on March 1, 2007, became central to the Nithari murder cases.

It portrayed Koli as the ultimate villain, a deranged killer – detailing how he lured his victims, strangled them because he would go into a trance-like state, and dismembered their bodies. Yet, the confession’s credibility was deeply contested. 

The High Court observed that Koli had been in custody for more than 60 days before the confession. It noted that the “prolonged” police custody caused “reasonable doubt” about the “voluntariness of (Koli’s) confession”.

Indian law mandates that confessions must be free from coercion. It is admissible only after ensuring that the accused has not been forced to accept a crime he did not commit.

Koli’s defence argued, as per the High Court judgments, that he had been tortured and threatened into confessing. He was denied legal aid and access to family during the 60 days of custody.

No medical examinations were conducted to ensure that Koli had not suffered any torture. The only medical examination done was before the confession was taken.

The medical report said that there were “no fresh marks of injury”, which the High Court claimed did not rule out older injuries.

Koli later retracted his confession, alleging coercion. 

While confessing, Koli had told the magistrate that he was beaten up in police custody, and he was forced to memorise names and photos of victims.

While statements on torture should have invalidated his confession, the magistrate continued Koli’s confession even after his revelations. 

Koli wrote multiple letters to the court detailing his ordeal – his fingernails pulled out, his genitals burned – and threats against his family.

The High Court noted that the confession's reliability was compromised by evidence of tutoring, rendering it “impossible to identify which part of the confession is tutored and which part is genuine”.

There were other hints of police influence and manipulation. The court observed that the prosecution failed to explain how Koli, who had only studied up to the 7th standard and had no legal knowledge, could write an application in a very formal language, offering to record his confession.

Ignored crucial leads

Key leads were neglected during the investigation.

Despite locals' claim that Maya, a domestic worker at Pandher’s bungalow, knew what had transpired inside D5, she was never questioned by the police. Similarly, other employees of D5 who might have provided crucial insights were overlooked, leaving claims in the neighbourhood mere speculations.  

The organ trade angle, flagged by a Ministry of Women and Child Development committee, was also dismissed. The committee’s report highlighted the “surgical precision” of cuts on the bodies and “missing torsos”, suggesting a possible link to organ trafficking.

Yet, no probe was conducted into Dr. Naveen Chowdhury, the owner of D6 and the managing director of Noida Medical Centre, who was accused in 1998 in an illegal kidney trade.

The Women and Child Development Ministry recommended that the investigation agencies look into the organ trade angle and study organ transplant records of all hospitals in Noida. No investigation was conducted even after this suggestion.

Post-mortem reports, which were in the possession of the police and CBI, were conspicuously absent in the trial court.

Koli applied twice to seek the production of the reports, but his requests were denied.

In October 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli in 12 cases, calling the investigation “botched up” and the norms of evidence collection “brazenly violated”. The failure to probe the organ trade angle, it said, amounted to a “betrayal of public trust”.

After 18 years in jail, while acquitted in most cases, one conviction upheld by the Supreme Court continues to shadow Koli. The investigative failures have denied closure for the families of the victims whose dismembered bodies were found that winter. The Nithari murders stand as a chilling indictment of our flawed criminal justice system.

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In the next part, we go further into how India’s courts judged the Nithari case and how the Indian government kept Koli’s life dangling.