Almost 19 years after he was first arrested in connection with the horrific “Nithari Serial Killings,” Surendra Koli—house help of Moninder Singh Pandher, the other accused—walked out of Ghaziabad’s Dasna Jail a free man.
The Supreme Court on November 11 set aside its earlier rulings upholding the conviction, and acquitted Koli of rape and murder in the gruesome serial murders that rocked the country in 2006.
Koli spent 19 years in jail, 16 of those on death row.
With the top court’s clean chit, Koli was free from all charges in all the cases against him. The Supreme Court expressed its “deep regret” that despite a prolonged investigation, “the identity of the actual perpetrator” was not established.
In 2006, skeletal remains found outside businessman Moninder Singh Pandher’s house in Nithari village in UP’s Noida - 40 kms or an hour away from the national capital, exposed the chilling case of serial murders, rape, and missing children. Police authorities had arrested Pandher along with his househelp Surendra Koli, and finally began looking into complaints of children who went missing between 2005-2006.
However, ex-IPS officer Amod Kanth has a different take on this issue. “I was in service when the Nithari case broke. I had the chance to study the case up close and personal. Circumstantially, there is a lot that connects Pandher and Koli to the crime, hence it would not be proper to call them completely innocent,” he said.
“From a criminological standpoint, the Surendra Koli case reflects several intertwined failures: procedural, institutional, and social. Each contributing to the ‘impossibility of returning to normal’ even after acquittal,” criminologist Ntasha Bharadwaj told BOOM,
Surendra Koli’s acquittal in the Nithari case is emblematic of the impact of wrongful convictions. Koli’s acquittal is not a story about innocence, but about a catastrophic procedural collapse. The Nithari case serves as a terrifying blueprint of a systemic crisis, exposing how coerced confessions and a failure to follow basic legal procedure are endemic to our investigative agencies.
As Professor GS Bajpai said, “Every acquittal tells the tale of a wrongful investigation”.
The acquittal also raises a critical question: If not Koli, then who killed the children?
The “botched” probe: Supreme Court on Surinder Koli’s acquittal
In an extraordinary curative petition - the absolute last and rare option of appeal before a constitutional court, the Supreme Court declared Koli’s conviction a “manifest miscarriage of justice,” because of a “botched” investigation that was built on inadmissible evidence.
The top court also expressed “deep regret” that despite a prolonged investigation, “the identity of the actual perpetrator has not been established in a manner that meets the legal standards.”
SC said criminal law does not permit conviction on conjecture or on a hunch. “Suspicion, however grave, cannot replace proof beyond reasonable doubt,” the judgment read. Justice Vikram Nath, who authored the verdict for himself, Chief Justice of India BR Gavai, and CJI-designate Surya Kant, further cautioned that “courts cannot prefer expediency over legality.”
The top court observed that when investigations are timely, professional, and constitutionally compliant, even the most difficult mysteries can be solved and many crimes can be prevented by early intervention.
Listing the inconsistencies, the Supreme Court noted how the crime scene was not secured, the disclosures were not recorded in accordance with procedure, and Koli was kept in prolonged police custody without a timely, court-directed medical examination which compromised his confessions.
Crucial scientific opportunities were lost when post-mortem material and other forensic outputs were not promptly and properly brought on record, the court added in a damning indictment of the investigation agencies. The court said the probe agencies did not adequately examine obvious witnesses from the household and neighbourhood, and failed to pursue material leads, including the organ-trade angle flagged by a government committee.
“Each lapse weakened the provenance and reliability of the evidence and narrowed the path to the truth,” the Supreme Court said.
Who killed the missing children of Nithari?
The Nithari judgment speaks of a system where neither justice to the victims nor fairness to the man it allegedly wrongfully condemned.
“Such dual failure raises a difficult but necessary question: who is accountable when the state gets it wrong?” criminologist Ntasha Bharadwaj told BOOM. “Without strong structures of oversight, transparency, and institutional responsibility, these miscarriages of justice will remain not exceptions, but predictable outcomes,” she added.
Former Supreme Court judge Madan Lokur said it is difficult to imagine what Koli must be going through after his exoneration. “He will be relieved for sure but will have to rebuild his life after several lost years,” Justice Lokur said.
“However, the impact on the victim's family would be worse. For them, there is no closure to a heinous crime against one of their own and perhaps the worst moment in their life,” the ex-judge added.
“Also, after so many years, it may not be possible to reopen the investigation to find out the ‘true offender’ as the Supreme Court puts it,” Justice Lokur told BOOM.
Ex-IPS officer Amod Kanth feels that the top court’s acquittal may not be a complete exoneration in the Nithari case because the needle of suspicion will always remain on Pandher and Koli. However, Kanth agrees that “a conviction cannot be based on a hunch.”
“One needs to connect the evidence substantially – beyond a reasonable doubt, for a conviction,” Kanth told BOOM.
Kanth—who retired as the Director General of Police (Goa) and is the man behind high-profile cases like the Rajiv Gandhi, Lalit Maken, and Arjun Das assassinations, the Jessica Lal murder case, capture of Charles Sobhraj, among others.
“I think the inaction of the local police when parents started reporting their children missing proved to be a huge setback. Had the police acted earlier, from the very first instance, then maybe they would have been able to get some clues. It was a poor probe from start to finish,” he added.
The Media trial and its impact
The 2006 Nithari Killings - a horrific case, became sensational even in the pre-social media era because of the media coverage at the time. “House of Horrors,” Nithari’s “Monster” “Cannibalism” were some of the headlines that flashed across TV screens in those days.
In fact, after almost two decades, the case has not lost its shock value. Bollywood film Sector 36, featuring Vikrant Massey, is loosely based on the 2006 serial murders. The film portrays Massey as the domestic help responsible for the crime even though Pandher and Koli were acquitted in almost all cases by the time of the film’s release in 2024.
Criminologist Ntasha Bharadwaj said once “the monster of Nithari” label was created, every institutional actor (police, courts) was operating within a moral panic rather than a search for truth.
“This case also exposes the urgent need for introspection within the Indian media. When journalism blurs into sensationalism, it does not illuminate the path to justice – it contaminates it,” Bharadwaj said.
Referring to more recent cases like the Sushant Singh Rajput case, the media trial against Bollywood actor Rhea Chakraborty, and the Aarushi Talwar case, Bharadwaj said media institutions must rethink their responsibility: are they serving truth, or serving viewership?
“Strengthened safeguards are needed to ensure that trials happen in courtrooms, not newsrooms, " she added.
The media trial also creates an “irreversible social stigma,” she added. Bharadwaj said that even after the acquittal, for Koli, reintegration is nearly impossible; the label sticks because the moral panic has outlived the legal case.
Senior advocate Yug Mohit Chaudhary, who represented Koli before the Supreme Court, told the media that “this poor man was framed to protect some powerful person”.
“Every bit of evidence was fake,” Chaudhary said. The senior lawyer said one must question the CBI because it was clear that despite knowing who the real culprit was, the probe agency created false evidence against these innocent people and trapped them.
Amod Kanth said one has to be discerning about the media pressure and must try to use it to one’s benefit. “I have worked on several high-profile cases, and the pressure is immense. However, I don’t see media scrutiny as a negative pressure. They are doing their job, just like I am,” Kanth said. Kanth referred to the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case to explain how he used the media for his probe.
“I even used a photo published in the newspaper to identify the key conspirators,” Kanth said.
“If you allow the media to overrun you and disturb the crime scene, then yes, that is a problem. Very few police officers may have dealt with the media like I have. The media is not trained in the science of investigation like I am. If I, as a police officer, am inept at my job and allow the media pressure to get to me, then how can I blame them?” he added.
A system without consequences
The acquittal raises questions whether the Nithari case was truly a pursuit of justice for the victims or merely a reaction to the media outrage.
Experts pointed out that when outrage becomes the driving force, the system’s goal subtly shifts from finding truth to delivering punishment.
Justice Madan Lokur said the investigating team should be held accountable. “Think of the family of all those victims. They are paying the price for the shabby, shoddy investigation, and the investigators are not even answerable. Difficult to make sense of it,” he added.
Senior advocate Shobha Gupta said the Supreme Court should have held someone accountable. “After so many years, if not Koli (or Pandher), then who is responsible? Gupta said this was also a betrayal of public trust – “It is the public’s exchequer that has now gone to waste.”
Acquittals akin to the Nithari case are not an isolated incident.
Earlier this year, the Bombay High Court in Kamal Ansari (2025) acquitted 11 persons in the Mumbai Bomb Blasts after observing that the prosecution failed to prove their case. By the time they were acquitted, the accused had already spent 17 years behind bars.
The Supreme Court in its Kattavellai Devakar (2025) case said there was a need to compensate those who have been wrongfully incarcerated when it acquitted a man on death row for the 2011 rape and murder of a couple.
Aarushi Talwar case, and G Saibaba are but a few among many other examples. In 2021, when three death row convicts walked out of jail free after the Supreme Court acquittal, they lost much more than time.
Ntasha Bharadwaj said, “Ultimately, it’s the justice system’s failures that robbed both the victims and the accused of the truth.”
