Pandher, Koli awarded death penalty

The special CBI court on Friday awarded capital punishment to businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surendra Koli for raping and murdering a minor girl, Rimpa Haldar, one of the 19 victims in the sensational Nithari serial killings case, a day after the duo convicted by the court.

Ghaziabad’s special CBI Judge Rama Jain pronounced the quantum of sentence, terming the case as falling in the ‘rarest of the rare’ category.

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“No more penalty could be awarded to the accused persons otherwise they deserve more punishment as their act of murder and rape in this particular case was beyond all the canons of humanity,” the verdict stated.

Earlier in the day during half-hour long final arguments, CBI sought death penalty for Koli and left the quantum of punishment for Pandher for the court to decide as the agency had no charges against him in this case.

The counsel of the victims’ family, Khalid Khan, dubbed the verdict as “slap on the CBI” which had given clean chit to Pandher, while Karandeep Singh, Pandher’s son, said his father was innocent and he would appeal against the judgment in the Allahabad High Court.

On Thursday, the court convicted Pandher under IPC sections 302, 376, 201 and 120B, and Koli under sections 302, 376, 364 and 511.

Section 302 (punishment for murder) calls for punishment with death, or imprisonment for life with fine; Section 376 (punishment for rape) provides the culprit be awarded not less than seven years and maximum life imprisonment; Section 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information), and Section 120B (hatching criminal conspiracy).

While Koli was charged with the kidnapping or abducting in order to murder (Section 364) and for attempting to commit offences, which are punishable with imprisonment for life (section 511).

Both Pandher and Koli were arrested in December 2006 by Noida police with accusation of killing and disposing off the bodies of at least 19 children between 2005 and 2006. The case was later transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation on January 11, 2007, viewing the complexity of the case.

The skeletal remains of the bodies were discovered in a drain close to Pandher’s house. The CBI team had, however, earlier given a clean chit to Pandher in the particular case citing the fact that he was not present in his house on the day of murder.

This was later questioned as there was no specific date of murder of Haldar on record, and hence giving benefit of doubt to Pandher was not justifiable.