New Delhi, Jul 30 (PTI) Convict Surendra Koli will continue to be in prison even after his acquittal was upheld by the Supreme Court in 12 cases of Nithari killings because of the life imprisonment awarded to him in the murder of teenage girl Rimpa Haldar by the Allahabad High Court, officials said.
“The convict (Koli) will continue to remain in jail because of a life term in one of the Nithari cases,” the CBI Spokesperson told PTI.
The killings came to light with the discovery of skeletal remains of eight children from a drain behind Moninder Singh Pandher’s house at Nithari in Noida, bordering the national capital, on December 29, 2006. Koli was a domestic help of Pandher.
The searches of drains in the area around Pandher’s house led to the discovery of more skeletal remains. Most of these were of poor children and young women who had gone missing from the area.
Within 10 days, the CBI took over the case and its search resulted in the recovery of more remains.
In all, 19 cases were lodged against Pandher and Koli in 2007. The CBI had filed closure reports in three of them due to lack of evidence. Of the remaining 16 cases, Koli was earlier acquitted in three cases and his death sentence in the Rimpa Haldar case was commuted to life.
Koli was given the death sentence by the Additional Sessions Judge, Ghaziabad, on February 13, 2009, for the killing of 14-year-old Haldar, who was reported missing on February 8, 2005.
His death sentence was confirmed by the Allahabad High Court on September 11, 2009. The appeal against the decision was dismissed by the Supreme Court on February 15, 2011.
The Additional Sessions Judge Ghaziabad had issued a death warrant for Koli’s execution on May 3, 2011, for hanging him between May 24 and May 31, 2011.
The execution was stopped because Koli filed a mercy petition with the Governor on May 7, 2011.
After three years and three months, it was finally rejected by the President on July 20, 2014.
After rejections of review petitions by the Supreme Court in 2014, death warrants were again issued by the Ghaziabad court and hanging was almost final when the matter reached the Allahabad High Court through a PIL filed by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights and a petition by Koli.
A bench of then HC chief justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PKS Baghel commuted Koli’s death sentence to life imprisonment on January 28, 2015, primarily on the grounds of a delay of three years and three months in disposing of the mercy petitions filed by Koli.
“Of this period, a period of 26 months that elapsed between the presentation of the mercy petition to the Governor on 7 May 2011 and the forwarding of the file by the State Government to the Union Government on 19 July 2013 upon the rejection of the mercy petition was avoidable, prolonged and unnecessary,” the bench had held.
The explanation of the state government for the delay of 26 months is palpably unfounded and unsound, it held.
An appeal is pending against the order in the Supreme Court, officials said.
His acquittal in 12 cases by the Allahabad High Court was challenged before the Supreme Court which on Wednesday upheld the high court order.
Pandher was initially charged in six cases. He was acquitted in three cases by the sessions court and by the Allahabad High Court in the remaining three — one in 2009 and two in 2023. PTI ABS RT RT
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