Six years after the gory Nithari serial killings in Noida, the Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed death penalty awarded to Surendra Koli in one case and termed the incidents involving 19 young victims as ''horrifying and barbaric''.
“It appears to be a case of serial killings. It falls in the category of rarest of rare cases. The killings by Koli was horrifying and barbaric,” a Bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Mishra said.
The court refused to show any mercy on Koli and dismissed his appeal against a decision of the Allahabad High Court, upholding the capital punishment awarded to him by a special CBI court in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad district in 2009.
It noted that 39-year-old Koli, an employee of Noida-based businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, used a “definite methodology” in committing murders as he lured the victims, ranging from 4 to 26 years, into the house, strangled them, tried to have sex with their dead bodies, cooked the body parts to eat them and threw the remains into a drain.
A total of 19 FIRs were registered following the recovery of body parts from a drain in Noida in 2005-06, while 16 cases were still pending. Koli is facing gallows in three cases.
The matter relating to the killing of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar is the first case which reached the apex court and got adjudicated by it.
The court, in its judgment, relied upon the confessional statement of Koli, who hailed from Uttrakhand, versions of two witnesses, besides the scientific evidences, including the DNA reports of the victim, to hold the appellant guilty.
The Bench, however, kept pending the appeal filed by Anil Haldar, father of the victim, against the acquittal of Pandher by the High Court in the case. Pandher was also awarded death penalty along with Koli by the trial court.