SC agrees to hear CBI pleas against HC verdict acquitting Surendra Koli

New Delhi: The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear pleas filed by the CBI challenging the Allahabad High Court’s verdict acquitting Surendra Koli in the sensational 2006 Nithari serial killings case.

A bench of Justices B R Gavai and K V Viswanathan sought a response from Koli on separate pleas filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against the high court’s verdict dated October 16, 2023.

The Apex Court in May agreed to hear a plea filed by the father of one of the victims challenging the high court’s order acquitting Koli in the case. In this case, Pandher was acquitted by the sessions court while Koli was awarded death penalty on September 28, 2010.

On Monday, the top court said the pleas filed by the CBI would come up for hearing along with the petition of the victim’s father. During the hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the CBI, said Koli was a “serial killer” who lured young girls and murdered them. Terming the incident as “gruesome”, Mehta said accusations of cannibalism were there in the case. The high court had acquitted domestic help Koli and his employer Moninder Singh Pandher in the Nithari serial killings case in which they were facing death sentence, holding that the prosecution failed to prove the guilt “beyond reasonable doubt” and that the investigation was “botched up”.

Reversing the death sentence given to Koli in 12 cases and Pandher in two cases, the high court had noted that the prosecution has failed to prove the guilt of both the accused “beyond reasonable doubt, on the settled parameters of a case based on

circumstantial evidence.”