Nithari case convict Surendra Koli found dead in Haridwar

Surendra Koli, the man who spent nearly two decades in prison in connection with the Nithari serial killings, was found dead at his tea stall in Haridwar, police said on Friday. He had shifted to the Uttarakhand city a few months ago.

Koli had walked out of Kasna jail in Greater Noida in November last year after the Supreme Court set aside his conviction in the rape and murder of a teenage girl. That acquittal was the last in a long series of cases stemming from the Nithari murders, and it ended a jail term that had stretched for 19 years.

The Nithari case

The killings came to light in December 2006, when skeletal remains were recovered from a drain and an open strip of land behind a house in Nithari village, in Noida's Sector 31. The house belonged to Moninder Singh Pandher, who employed Koli as a domestic help. Several women and children had been reported missing from the area between 2005 and 2006.

Pandher and Koli were arrested on December 29, 2006, after police recovered skeletons and belongings of some of the missing girls from the drain. The two were accused of abducting and raping women and children from nearby villages, and of disposing of the bodies in the drain.

The Central Bureau of Investigation took over the probe, and 19 FIRs were registered against the two men in connection with crimes against 19 girls. Chargesheets were filed in 16 of those cases.

Convictions and acquittals

On February 13, 2009, a special CBI court convicted and sentenced both men to death for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. The Allahabad High Court later upheld Koli's death sentence but acquitted Pandher. Koli's appeal before the Supreme Court was dismissed in 2011, as was a review petition in 2014.

In January 2015, the Allahabad High Court commuted Koli's death sentence to life imprisonment, citing inordinate delay in the disposal of his mercy petition. Two years later, a special CBI court in Ghaziabad handed a death sentence to both men in the rape and murder of a 25-year-old domestic help who had gone missing in 2006 and was identified through human remains found at Pandher's house.

In 2023, the special court acquitted Pandher in two cases and Koli in 12. Koli, however, remained in jail because of his conviction in one case. The same year, the Allahabad High Court acquitted both men for lack of evidence, and Pandher walked free.

Koli's release came only in November 2025, when the Supreme Court acquitted him in the rape and murder case of the teenage girl.