Nithari Case: Surinder Koli, Acquitted Last Year, Found Dead in Haridwar

Surinder Koli, the domestic help who spent nearly two decades in prison over the 2006 Nithari killings before being acquitted, was found dead in Haridwar. His body was discovered hanging from a rope inside a tea stall where he had been working after his release. No suicide note was recovered from the shop, and police have informed his family in Almora while starting an investigation.

The disappearances

The case began in 2006, when children from poor labourer families in Nithari, a village in Noida, started going missing. Families filed complaints, but their concerns were allegedly ignored by the police. Relatives of two missing girls, Jyoti (10) and Rachna (8), suspected Koli, who worked at the nearby home of businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, but their complaint led nowhere.

The breakthrough came only after another girl, Payal, disappeared. Investigators traced her mobile phone to a local rickshaw puller, who said he had received it from someone at the D-5 bungalow in Noida's Sector 31, Pandher's residence.

The discovery and arrests

A search of the drain behind Pandher's bungalow yielded 16 human skulls, bones and clothing stuffed into plastic sacks. Evidence inside the house pointed to what was initially described as a serial killing and cannibalism ring, with reports suggesting the bodies had been cut with "butcher-like precision". Koli and Pandher were arrested.

Koli confessed to abducting children, sexually assaulting them and dumping their bodies in the drain. Rumours that some body parts were eaten or sold spread widely, though no conclusive forensic evidence ever backed these claims.

Convictions and a long legal battle

Both men faced charges of rape, murder and destruction of evidence across multiple FIRs, with at least 19 cases filed between 2007 and 2010. Koli was handed death sentences in several cases, while Pandher received both death and life terms. The Supreme Court upheld Koli's death penalty in 2011, and then President Pranab Mukherjee rejected his mercy petition.

Koli was scheduled to be hanged on September 12, 2014, but then Chief Justice HL Dattu ordered a stay at 1.30 am on September 8, following a review petition by Koli's lawyer. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence again the next month. In 2015, the Allahabad High Court commuted the penalty to life imprisonment, citing inordinate delay in deciding the mercy plea. Four years later, Koli received another death sentence in his 10th conviction; according to counsel for the victims' families, he was convicted in 13 cases.

Acquittals

In October 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted both Koli and Pandher, citing a lack of credible evidence. It flagged multiple investigative failures: the crime scene was never secured before excavation, Koli's alleged confession was not recorded properly, remand papers contained contradictions, forensic evidence was missing, contaminated or inconclusive, and the bones and skulls were recovered from an open drain accessible to all, weakening their evidentiary value.

The CBI, the Uttar Pradesh government and the victims' families challenged the decision in the Supreme Court. In November 2025, the top court acquitted the two of all charges, holding that suspicion, however grave, cannot replace proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Life after acquittal

After his release, Koli had been running a tea stall in Haridwar. A native of Uttarakhand's Almora, he came from a poor family and had dropped out of school due to financial constraints before moving to Delhi-NCR in search of work as a labourer and domestic help. He joined Pandher's household in 2004, when he was around 20, and had an ill mother, a pregnant wife and a young daughter.