New Delhi: Nearly two decades after the Nithari killings case shocked the nation, Surendra Koli walked out of jail a free man Wednesday evening. Dressed in a blue shirt, dark jacket and trousers, he emerged from prison surrounded by policemen and lawyers, only his eyes and greying hair visible as the rest of his face remained covered by a mask.
Two days ago, the Supreme Court acquitted Koli, the key accused and death row convict in the final pending rape and murder case against him, effectively closing one of India’s most disturbing yet dramatic criminal sagas.
Koli’s conviction in this case, involving the 2005 killing of a 15-year-old girl, had earlier been upheld by the top court in February 2011. However, he approached the Supreme Court again through a curative petition this year. He based his curative plea on a 2023 Supreme Court decision that upheld his acquittal by the Allahabad High Court in 12 of the 13 Nithari cases.
The case decided on Tuesday was the 13th one, in which he was sentenced to death by all three courts—the trial court, Allahabad HC and the top court. Following the Supreme Court’s pronouncement, holding Koli guilty, in 2011, the Ghaziabad court had issued a death warrant.
His mercy plea was dismissed by the Uttar Pradesh governor and later by the President as well. But his death sentence was halted in 2014.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai, Justice Surya Kant, and Justice Vikram Nath noted “deep regret” on the lax police probe. It said that despite prolonged investigation, the identity of the actual perpetrator has not been established in a manner that meets the legal standards. Koli’s release was ordered forthwith.
Authored by Justice Nath, the bench observed that serious investigative lapses and constitutional violations had fatally compromised the integrity of the “adjudicatory process”, marking a scathing indictment of the criminal justice system.
“When investigations are timely, professional and constitutionally compliant, even the most difficult mysteries can be solved,” the court said. “It is, therefore, genuinely unfortunate that in the present matter negligence and delay corroded the fact-finding process and foreclosed avenues that might have identified the true offender.”
Holding that the Nithari offences were “heinous” and that the families’ suffering was “beyond measure”, the court nonetheless stressed that “criminal law does not permit conviction on conjecture or on a hunch. Suspicion, however grave, cannot replace proof beyond reasonable doubt”.
A rare post-review acquittal
Following the verdict, Koli’s counsel, Advocate Yug Mohit Chaudhry, noted that this is the second instance in Indian judicial history where the Supreme Court has acquitted a death row convict after the dismissal of a review petition.
Koli’s conviction in the case of the 2005 killing of a 15-year-old girl had been upheld by the apex court in February 2011. However, after his acquittal in 12 of the 13 Nithari cases by the Allahabad High Court, he approached the Supreme Court again through a curative petition, arguing that his conviction in the present case was based on the same discredited evidence.
In July 2025, a similar three-judge bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals filed by the state challenging those acquittals, effectively upholding the High Court’s findings.
What is a curative petition and why was it allowed in this case?
A curative petition is the final judicial remedy in Indian law, allowing only the Supreme Court to extraordinarily reconsider its own final judgment to correct a “manifest miscarriage of justice”. It can only be entertained on narrow grounds, typically when gross procedural or constitutional violations are shown.
In Koli’s case, the bench said it was compelled to intervene “to preserve the purity of this Court’s process and to vindicate the rule of law”.
The court said the petitioner had demonstrated “manifest miscarriage of justice” as two contradictory rulings based on the same evidence cannot stand together.
“When final orders of this Court speak with discordant voices on an identical record, the integrity of adjudication is imperilled, and public confidence is shaken. In such a situation, intervention ex debito justitiae is not an act of discretion but a constitutional duty,” it added.
The Latin phrase “ex debito justitiae” translates to “as a matter of right, or from a debt of justice” . This implies that the Court was duty-bound to correct the inconsistency in its own previous rulings to uphold justice and public faith in the system.
Background: The Nithari killings
The Nithari killings came to light in December 2006, when skeletal remains of children were discovered from a drain behind the house of businessman Moninder Singh Pandher in Noida’s Nithari village.
Koli, Pandher’s domestic help, was accused of kidnapping, raping and killing several children between 2005 and 2007, leading to 13 separate prosecutions.
He was convicted in one of these cases in 2011 and sentenced to death, a punishment later commuted to life imprisonment by the Allahabad High Court in 2015.
In the remaining 12 cases, however, the Allahabad High Court in October 2023 and July 2025 acquitted both Koli and Pandher, holding that the evidence — primarily a confession and alleged recoveries — was unreliable and tainted by procedural lapses.
‘Tutored’ confessions and dubious recoveries
The High Court found that Koli’s confession under Section 164 CrPC was not voluntary. He had been kept in police custody for about 60 days before the statement, had no meaningful legal aid, and the recording magistrate failed to certify its voluntariness.
The Investigating Officer’s proximity during the confession, and his ready access outside the room, “undermined voluntariness”, the Court recorded. “The text of the statement itself repeatedly adverted to tutoring and to prior coercion.”
Similarly, the alleged recoveries under Section 27 of the Evidence Act were found defective. Excavations had begun before Koli’s purported disclosure, the site was not under his “exclusive domain”, and there was “no contemporaneous disclosure memo” or there was no formal record to show that Koli’s statement actually led to the recovery.
“The evidence showed that the police and members of the public already knew bones and articles lay in the open strip,” the Court observed.
Probe lapses, organ trade angle & missed leads
The Supreme Court, concurring with the High Court’s detailed critique, noted that crucial forensic opportunities were lost due to negligence.
“The scene was not secured before excavation began, the alleged disclosure was not contemporaneously recorded, the remand papers carried contradictory versions, and the petitioner was kept in prolonged police custody without a timely, court-directed medical examination,” the judgment said.
“Crucial scientific opportunities were lost when post-mortem material and other forensic outputs were not promptly and properly brought on record. Searches of D-5 (Mohinder Pandher’s house) yielded no incriminating traces that could be forensically anchored to the alleged events,” it added.
Expert searches found no human bloodstains, remains, or DNA traces consistent with the alleged murders inside the house. The Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) linked certain remains to families of missing persons but found no biological connection between Koli and the killings. Even the knives and axe exhibited as weapons carried no matching blood, tissue or hair evidence.
The court noted that investigators failed to pursue several “material leads,” including an organ-trade angle flagged by a committee of the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
“The investigation did not adequately examine obvious witnesses from the household and neighbourhood and did not pursue material leads, including the organ-trade angle,” the judgment observed. “Each lapse weakened the provenance and reliability of the evidence and narrowed the path to the truth.”
In essence, each mistake made the evidence less trustworthy and made it harder to uncover the real truth.
Constitutional safeguards & miscarriage of justice
Reaffirming that Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees a fair, just, and reasonable procedure, especially in death penalty cases, the Court said allowing the conviction to stand on evidence already found unreliable in identical cases would offend Articles 14 and 21.
The bench said that giving different judgments on the same evidence goes against the principle of equality before the law, and that the curative petition system exists to correct such inconsistencies before they become accepted precedent.
While recognising that court cases must eventually end, the Supreme Court said this case clearly met the high bar for reopening: the confession used to convict Koli was legally flawed, the alleged recoveries did not meet legal requirements, and the forensic record failed to fill the gaps. Once these key pieces were discredited, the entire chain of evidence collapsed.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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