Nithari killings: Rape, cannibalism, murder ends in acquittal of Moninder Pandher, Surinder Koli. Explained

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Moninder Singh Pandher has also been acquitted by the Court in two cases in which he was sentenced to death by the trial court. The Allahabad HC cited lack of evidence for their judgement. Surinder Koli and Moninder Singh Pandher had been sentenced to death on charges of rape and murder.

Pandher was convicted in the Pinki Sarkar rape and murder case, along with several other cases of rape, murder, pornography and cannibalism. The sensational killings came to light with the discovery of the skeletal remains of eight children from the drain behind Pandher's house in Nithari, Noida, on December 29, 2006. Further digging and searches of drains in the area around Pandher's house led to more skeletal remains being found.

Most of these remains were that of poor children and young women who had gone missing from the area. Within 10 days, the CBI took over case and its search resulted in the recovery of more bones. While Pandher is lodged in a Noida jail, Koli is in a Ghaziabad prison.

The Noida serial murders, as it came to be known eventually were believed to have been committed between 2005 and 2006 by Moninder Singh Pandher and his house-help Surinder Koli. The murders came to limelight when two Nithari village residents reported they knew the location of the remains of children who had gone missing in the previous two years. The two were also parents whose daughters had gone missing.

Later residents claimed to have found a decomposed hand in a drain, after which they contacted the police. Anxious parents of children missing in the last two years rushed to Nithari with photographs. Koli, under the alias Satish, later confessed to killing six children and a 20-year-old woman referred to as "Payal" after sexually assaulting