NITHARI ACCUSED SENTENCED TO DEATH

The brutal and shocking Nithari murders have not vanished from the conscience of Indians, especially the residents of Noida where the serial killings took place. The accused were recently found guilty and sentenced to death by the CBI Special Court in one of the cases of the total 16 cases against the accused businessman Mohinder Singh Pandhel and his domestic help Surender Koli. The cases rattled India in 2006 when the matter came to light when the residents and Police unearthed the bodies of several children and young women who had disappeared from the area in the past two years. The accused were immediately taken into custody, and investigations were completed, revealing incidents of abduction, rape, sexual abuse, murder and even suspected cannibalism.

The CBI Special Court convicted the duo and sentenced them to death on 24^th July 2017, after a protracted legal battle that went on for years after the crime was discovered. The verdict came in the case of rape and murder of a 20 year old woman Pinki Sarkar who was abducted, raped and murdered before being dismembered and buried in the vicinity of the crime scene which was the place of residence of the accused. The prosecutor Mr. JP Sharma relied on an arena of factual and scientific evidence to prove the offence in Court, and the defense lawyers argued on circumstantial evidence on the claim that Koli was in fact at another place on the alleged date of the incident. However, the Court took heed of the plethora of incriminating evidence available against the accused and convicted them of the offenses.

It is only the second case where conviction has been secured, among the 16 cases that were registered against the accused in the bizarre incident. But it certainly comes as a relief to the families of the many victims who are awaiting justice even after a decade of the crime.