Nestled between two larger and more modern buildings in a village in northern India sits house number D5, an abandoned bungalow whose garden is now overrun with vines. Owned by a local businessman, the deserted house is spoken about in hushed tones for its role in a grisly tale that is yet to be concluded.
Nearly two decades ago, children and young women started to disappear without a trace from this quiet village of Nithari, located some 20km from India’s capital Delhi, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Desperate families scoured nearby streets and repeatedly approached the police, but to no avail. As the number of disappearances continued to rise, eventually reaching a total of 19, fear gripped local villagers who started to refuse to leave home after noon.
The horror deepened in the winter of 2006, when mutilated remains of the missing victims began surfacing in drains and sewers near the home of businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, owner of D5. The discoveries confirmed what was unfolding: one of India’s most horrifying serial murder cases.
Following a lengthy investigation, a special court connected to India’s federal investigating agency in 2009 handed death sentences to both Pandher and his domestic aide, Surinder Koli, for their alleged roles in the gruesome killings. Koli faced charges including murder, rape, abduction, and destruction of evidence, while Pandher was accused of involvement in trafficking.
Koli was sentenced to death in 2011 for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. Nineteen separate cases were eventually filed against the two men. But years later the cases began to collapse, and in 2023 a court acquitted Pandher citing insufficient evidence.
Koli was also cleared in all but one case. He remains imprisoned in connection with the first murder case involving the 15-year-old. But India’s Supreme Court is now preparing to deliver its verdict on Koli’s petition to overturn his final conviction, and comments by the judges so far indicate there is a good chance he will be successful. If his plea is accepted, Koli will walk free after spending nearly two decades in prison.
Police have not publicly identified any other suspects in relation to the case.
After so many years of pain, the families of the victims say the ongoing uncertainty around the convictions is causing them renewed alarm and anguish. For many the blame is now turning on police for failing to deliver them justice.
In its October 2023 ruling acquitting both Koli and Pandher in several of the Nithari cases, Uttar Pradesh’s Allahabad High Court said investigators had “brazenly violated basic norms of collecting evidence”.
Koli’s conviction rested primarily on a confession and the recovery of a kitchen knife, which the court noted raised questions about the sufficiency of evidence. He has now been acquitted in a total of 12 cases tied to the same series of killings in the village.
A federal inquiry committee probing the serial killings in 2007 severely indicted the Uttar Pradesh police for “gross negligence” in handling the cases of missing persons. The committee did not rule out organ trade as a possible motive behind the killings.
Body parts stuffed in plastic bags were found buried in Pandher’s backyard and drains. One victim, Pinki Sarkar, was identified through her “salwar suit and slippers” and “black hair clip”. According to reports, doctors said there was a “butcher-like precision” in which the bodies were chopped up.
A total of 19 cases were filed against Pandher and Koli in 2007, but the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) – India’s top investigating agency – filed closure reports in three citing a lack of evidence. Police said the nature of the remains discovered made it impossible to ascertain an exact number of victims.
A Supreme Court bench led by the chief justice of India, BR Gavai, heard Koli’s petition in open court earlier this month.
The judges observed that Koli’s plea “deserves to be allowed”, questioning why he remains convicted in one case when he has already been acquitted in others based on the same evidence.
“Will this not be anomalous?” the bench asked. “If on the same set of facts this court has acquitted him in other cases, and he is convicted in this one on the same evidence – will this not be a travesty of justice?”
Curative petitions, a rare legal remedy devised by the Supreme Court in 2002, allow a final review of a conviction to correct any miscarriage of justice.
The court’s observations, which experts say point to a likely acquittal, have “devastated” the victims’ families’ faith in the justice system. The Independent contacted the office of CBI director Praveen Sood with detailed questions for this report, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
“We got the case opened but the police has not done its duty,” says Jhabbu Lal, the father of a 10-year-old girl whose clothes and slippers were found in the compound of the now infamous D5 bungalow.
“Among the hundreds of skeletons found in the premise, our daughter’s was also found and later confirmed after DNA analysis,” he tells The Independent.
Sharing his outrage after the court’s observations, the 63-year-old father says: “We have lost all hope. There is no hope for justice from anyone but god.”
Lal says he “doesn’t care” about keeping Koli in prison. “When children of poor people are killed, why scapegoat only a poor man who worked as a house help when his master (Pandher) was long acquitted?” he asks.
Pandher spent a total of 14 years behind bars after his arrest in 2006, interspersed with periods out on bail. He was charged in six cases linked to Nithari killings and convicted in three by a lower court before the Allahabad High Court acquitted him. The bench of justices expressed “disappointment” with the “botched” investigation.
Justices Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Syed Aftab Husain Rizvi said the “prosecution failed to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt, on the settled parameters of a case based on circumstantial evidence”.
At the time, Pandher’s lawyer Manisha Bhandari told The Times of India that he was relieved about the order. “It was a 17-year wait. Trial court judgements were influenced by the media trial and the Allahabad High Court (state court) corrected this. There should be a balance in reporting about a case after any crime.”
The media trial he refers to was fierce and detailed, with rumours of murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia swirling in Indian media reports fuelling mounting public anger.
Given all that happened, Pandher has not returned to his bungalow after leaving prison. Nithari has changed beyond recognition since the time of the killings, transforming from a dangerous and underdeveloped neighbourhood into a sprawling locality with broad and well-lit streets between planned, gated societies. Only D5, which has gone from a standalone bungalow to become terraced between newer housing blocks, appears frozen in time.
Jaleel, 60, a fruit seller in the area for over three decades, says the killings left the area scarred back then, with a belief that abductions were most likely to take place during the quiet afternoon heat. “By 12 noon, everyone used to go home and not return or even try to step out of their homes till 5pm because anyone could be killed or abducted”.
“I used to accompany my wife around, if she had to go from one place to another. No matter the distance or time of the day. We all knew, women and children especially were regularly attacked, assaulted, were disappearing and getting abducted.”
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Lala Ram, 65, who irons and launders clothes in the area, corroborates the account.
“The conditions were indeed very unsafe,” says Ram, who moved to Nithari in 2003. “We all feared for safety. And then soon after bodies and skeletons of children and women were found.”
Lal describes an atmosphere of police apathy even as he tried to report his 10-year-old daughter missing.
“I ran from pillar to post at the time to ask the police to take the case seriously. My daughter was 10 and had been missing for one year and seven months. I just thought, may be someone just kidnapped her and sold her to GB road or something,” he says, referring to a red-light district in the capital. “Police did not take the matter of missing children seriously at all,” he recalls.
“Even after the skeletons were found, I called the media to ensure that my daughter’s case is not brushed aside,” he says, blaming the police for their “lax” investigation.
“In our country, authorities listen to only those who have money. We don’t have any rights. But they own the system.”
When asked what he remembers about his 10-year-old, he says: “What should I recall about her? How long should I remember her when no one can do anything right by her.”
