Nithari serial killings: First verdict today

Over two years after the infamous Nithari serial killings came to light, a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court is likely to pronounce its first verdict today (February 12).

Special Judge Rema Jain will hear the brutal murder case of Rimpa Haldar, a 14-year-old girl working as housemaid at bungalow number D-5, Sector 31, Noida (owned by Moninder Singh Pandher), who went missing four years ago.

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Surender Koli, Pandher’s domestic help, has confessed before CBI to sexually assaulting and killing Rimpa. CBI findings also revealed that Koli was suffering from necrophilia (urge to have sex with a corpse) and necrophagia (urge to eat the flesh of a body).

A total of 19 cases of killings, mainly of girls and women, were registered in Noida police station. The investigating agency has filed chargesheets in 16 cases, however, given clean chit to Pandher, the co-accused in the case.

CBI in its statement said that Koli had committed the crime on February 8, 2005 and Pandher was not a part of the crime citing evidence that he was in Australia on the day of murder.

Pandher’s release from this case is also in question as the date of the murder is not clear, as per the arguments of victim's advocate. It is said that as there was no specific date of murder of Haldar on record, hence giving the benefit to Pandher was not justified by the CBI.

The investigation into these gruesome killings first began on December 2006 with the missing of a girl named Payal. This later forced Uttar Pradesh police to reach to Pandher and later to the drain from where skeletal remains of a number of missing children were discovered from a drain near Pandher’s house.

Police on December 26 arrested Pandher and then Koli a day later. But, after a huge public outcry, and the possibility of different angles into the case later made the state government to hand over the case to CBI.