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28-11-2025
NEW DELHI: Nearly 20 years after police found the bodies of 19 women and children near a bungalow dubbed India’s “house of horrors”, the case is back in the spotlight because Surinder Koli, the last of the two men convicted, has walked free.
On 12 November, the Supreme Court acquitted him in the final case pending against him, accepting his claim that his confession which included admissions of cannibalism and necrophilia had been extracted under torture.
The case dates back to December 2006, when police identified a bungalow in Noida, a suburb of the capital Delhi, as the site where women and children were killed and dismembered, and some allegedly raped. Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and Surinder Koli, his servant, were arrested after body parts were found near their home.
The revelations triggered national outrage. Parents accused police of ignoring complaints that children had been going missing for more than two years. The case also exposed India’s deep social divides: this occurred in an affluent enclave, while the victims were mostly from the neighboring slums of Nithari, home to poor migrant families.
The two men were convicted of rape and murder and spent years on death row. Moninder Singh Pandher was freed in 2023, with the court eventually finding there to be a lack of evidence. Now his servant is out of jail too, bringing to an end the long judicial process in one of India’s most disturbing criminal cases.
The media visited Nithari a few days after the judgement, and found that most of the victims’ families no longer lived there. Two, who remain in the neighborhood, said they were trying to come to terms with the court order and wondering, “if Pandher and Koli didn’t, then who killed our children?”
In interviews since his release, Moninder Singh Pandher has said he was innocent. Surinder Koli has not been seen in public since leaving prison and has not said anything, but his lawyer Yug Mohit Chaudhry said “all the evidence against him was fabricated”.
After 19 years, in the 13 cases in which he had been sentenced to death, he had already been proven innocent in 12 of them. One case was left, in which five courts had declared him guilty and gave the death sentence.
“Today, the Supreme Court has overturned those earlier four or five judgments in that case as well… These were extremely serious charges, but all the evidence was fabricated,” Chaudhry told media.
“This poor man was framed to protect some powerful person. Every bit of evidence was fake, not a single piece could justify a conviction… You should ask this question to the CBI (the federal Central Bureau of Investigation), because it is clear that the CBI, despite knowing who the real culprit was, created false evidence against these innocent people and trapped them. Ask these questions to the CBI,” he added. The CBI has not commented on the acquittal.
The media has sent detailed questions to police in Uttar Pradesh state, where Noida is located, but hasn’t received a response yet.
Many in Nithari are finding it very difficult to come to terms with the verdict.
“If they are innocent, then how come they were in prison for 18 years?” asks Sunita Kanaujia, tears rolling down her cheeks. Her 10-year-old daughter Jyoti went missing in the summer of 2005. DNA tests later confirmed that she was among the victims. “God will not forgive those who killed her,” she says.
Sunita’s husband Jhabbu Lal Kanaujia, who was instrumental in unearthing the serial killings, says he felt utter despair after hearing of Surinder Koli’s acquittal and burned all the papers related to the case he had collected over the years. (Int’l News Desk)
