By Rana Ajit, Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi: The chilling confession by businessman Moninder Singh Pandher to police that he had his manservant “lure children” into his house to satisfy his “carnal lust” and afterwards have them killed “lest the secret is exposed” seems to have been completely ignored by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) when they absolved him of the serial murders. That is one of the reasons why a designated CBI court asked the investigating agency to probe the matter afresh.
Pandher’s confessional statement to Noida police, made right after the discovery of human remains from the drains behind his Sector 27 Noida house, that his domestic aide Surendra Koli killed children and young women at his behest is a crucial piece of evidence that had been junked by the CBI.
The CBI had absolved him of the graver offences of abduction, rape and murder in the serial killings of children of Nithari, Pandher’s house from where most of the poor victims hailed. Nithari is a working class slum just across the national capital in Uttar Pradesh in Noida distric.
The CBI ignored Pandher’s confession despite being aware of its crucial evidentiary value. The agency suspected that Pandher had made the confession to Noida police under duress.
In his confessional statement, made available to IANS, Pandher told Noida police: “I have had Payal (a 24-year-old woman) eliminated and her body disposed of by my domestic aide Surendra Koli under a plot hatched by me as she had begun blackmailing me despite charging Rs.2,500 for every single night with me.”
“Surendra would lure children into the house and I would satisfy my carnal lust. I used to have them killed lest the secret is exposed. Please forgive me,” he told the police.
His manservant Surendra, whom the CBI has charged with the serial sexual assault and murders, corroborated his master’s version in his confession, saying he lured children in the house on Pandher’s instructions.
“I would lure children and satisfy my carnal lust too after the boss satisfied his. Later I would strangulate them to death, behead them, chop the body into pieces and throw them in the drains adjoining the house,” Surendra told Noida police, confessing to 15 rapes and killings.
Though a stand-alone confessional statement to the police is of little evidentiary value in courts, what makes this confession by the two crucial in the investigation is the part of the statement which says the police began recovering bodies from the drains adjoining Pandher’s house at their instance.
The joint confession of the two, recorded by Noida’s former Deputy Superintendent of Police Dinesh Yadav on Dec 29, 2006, notes: “Accused Surendra and Moninder have confessed to their crime and at their instances police have recovered 15 skulls and skeletal remains of the bodies from the drains.”
This noting by the police about confessions leading to recovery of bodies makes their confessions admissible as evidence against them under section 27 of the Evidence Act.
The Section 27 of the Act reads, “… when any fact is deposed as discovered in consequence of information received from an accused in police custody, so much of such information, whether it amounts to a confession or not, as relates distinctly to the facts of discovery, may be proved.”
Asked why the CBI has not arraigned Pandher for conspiracy to murder despite his confession, CBI Special Director M.L. Sharma said: “It’s an open secret how police extract confessions. Moreover, it’s of nil evidentiary value in the court.”
But when pointed out the provisions of the section 27 of the Evidence Act, Sharma grudgingly admitted the evidentiary value of the confession.
Asked if it would not have been better for the CBI to let the courts decide if Pandher’s confession to Noida police is worth relying upon, Sharma retorted, “Our legal system is blind. They would hang him on its basis.”
Swearing by Pandher’s innocence, Sharma said: “Who is Pandher? Why would the CBI exonerate him of the murder charges? It’s simply because our investigation has found that despite several vices, he has not committed murder.
“What goes in his favour is the fact that the killings continued even after the ninth murder of sex worker Payal in May 2006 for which Surendra had been picked up by the police on suspicion and was interrogated about the whereabouts of the missing woman,” added the CBI officer.
Sharma quoted Pandher as telling CBI in his defence: “Suppose I committed all the murders. But then am I so insane that I would have continued the killings and dumping the bodies in my own backyard even after Noida police picked up Surendra to quiz him about missing Payal?”
“At this juncture I certainly would have become more alert knowing that the needle of suspicion has moved towards me. At this juncture, I would have either stopped the killings or at least stopped dumping the bodies in my own backyard,” Sharma quoted Pandher as saying.
The CBI officer said that the agency took “a conscious decision” to exonerate Pandher of conspiracy to murder charges despite “stiff resistance” from various quarters “owing to institutional strength of the CBI as an investigative agency and its commitment to free and fair investigation”.
But if the CBI is so convinced of Pandher’s innocence, it could well have booked the Noida Deputy SP Yadav for extracting such a damming confession from an “innocent citizen”, but the CBI has done nothing like this.