Nithari killings: Surendra Koli gets death sentence

ghaziabad: Ghaziabad's Special CBI court on Thursday announced punishment for both the accused in connection with the infamous Noida's Nithari murder case. The court gave death sentence to Surendra Koli and seven years of imprisonment to Moninder Singh Pandher in the 16th and last case of Nithari killings.

The CBI court convicted Surendra Koli on the subject of kidnapping, rape, culpable homicide in addition to hiding proof. Surendra Koli was convicted in 13 instances and was acquitted in three others for loss of proof.

During this, he was to be hanged in Meerut after the mercy petition was rejected by the President in only one case, but due to the delay, the Supreme Court canceled the execution. Whereas in one case, the High Court had commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment.

While both Koli and Pandher are imprisoned at a jail in Meerut, the court on Thursday announced life imprisonment to Koli under IPC 364 and death under IPC 302 while the other accused Maninder Singh Pandher has been sentenced to seven years imprisonment under Section 5 of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.

Together with this, the court has also imposed a penalty of Rs 40,000 on Surendra Koli and Rs 4,000 on Moninder Singh Pandher.

In 2005, the girl, a resident of Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand, had come to Noida with her family. While she was looking for a job for herself, on 7 May, 2006, she reached Maninder Singh Pandher's kothi for a job but did not return home. Next day, the girl's father lodged a missing complaint at Noida Police Station Sector-20.

Noida Police, which was probing in this case, recovered the skeleton of the girl from the drain of D-5 kothi in Nithari on the behest of both the accused. Since 2007, the trial of this case was going on in the CBI court of Ghaziabad.