By Rana Ajit, IANS
New Delhi : It was exactly a year ago that the Nithari killings came to light from the murky depths of a drain in Noida – bits of bone, children’s skulls, plastic bags full of entrails, along with torn bits of clothing, kids’ shoes, tiffin boxes – chilling the world with the macabre details of the serial murders.
And a year later, the cases against Noida businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic servant Surendra Koli, the alleged psychopaths behind the slayings of 19 children and young women have progressed very little.
The drain behind Pandher’s D-5 house in Noida, a township adjacent to Delhi, threw up for several days the decomposed remains of the raped and murdered children and young women, all from poor families living nearby, as police investigators plumbed its dark depths for more clues.
Since Dec 29 last year, much water has flown down the Nithari drain.
Of the 19 cases registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for the Nithari serial rapes and killing, the agency has till date completed investigations in 11, giving Pandher a clean chit in 10 cases and indicting him only in one – for the milder offence of soliciting women for sex.
Even as the judiciary revved up hope of justice by framing charges of rape and murder against Pandher, the CBI continues to face allegations that it was derailing the prosecution.
The Nithari killings also showed the police force there in poor light as even after missing person complaints lodged by the families of the victims and anxious reminders to search for the children, some as young as five, the police are accused of having treated the matter with callous disregard.
The CBI giving Pandher a clean chit, by absolving him of the graver rape and murder charges, has also invited much criticism.
After winding up its probe on March 22 in the case related to the murder of 22-year-old Payal, the CBI filed its first charge sheet in a Ghaziabad court, absolving Pandher and indicting Koli for the crime.
This was despite the CBI being aware of the confessions given to Noida police by Pandher and Koli during the initial probe that both had been equal partners in the crime.
A senior CBI official told IANS: “Who is Pandher? Why will the CBI, which has prosecuted the who’s who of the country, absolve him unless he is innocent? We don’t believe in prosecuting innocent people.”
The CBI official maintained that the two had made the confessions to police under duress.
But Ghaziabad’s Special CBI Judge Rama Jain was not convinced by the clean chit to Pandher. Depending upon the same confessions, submitted to the court by parents of some of the Nithari victims through their counsel Khalid Khan, the judge framed charges of murder and rape against Pandher as well.
The court ruled that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute Pandher on charges of rape and murder as well in four cases – that of Payal, Pinki Sarkar, Anjali and Madhu.
The allegations against the CBI strengthened following the mysterious drowning of victim Pinki Sarkar’s father Jatin in the Ganges in Behrampur area of Murshidabad district in West Bengal on Sep 1.
The drowning led to the Jatin’s wife moving the Supreme Court, alleging that the CBI had been threatening her husband with dire consequences if he did not desist from deposing against Pandher in court.
The petition before the apex court resulted in the Behrampur police registering a case of murder against CBI director Vijay Trivedi, Superintendent of Police S.J.M Geelani and dismissed Noida Deputy Superintendent of Police Dinesh Yadav.
Meanwhile, the Ghaziabad court is to decide Jan 4 whether there exists evidence to prosecute Pandher on rape and murder charges in a fifth case.