On September 10, 2009, unbeknown to Surendra Koli, his entire life was about to change. That day, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli’s employer, businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, in the Nithari murder case. Pandher’s death sentence was overturned, but Koli was not as fortunate.
D5 in Nithari village, once a pristine white bungalow, is now hidden beneath dense, wild foliage. The sealed structure, engulfed by dark, heavy vines, suggests decay rather than renewal.
This was the home of Pandher and his domestic help, Koli. In 2006, a drain behind the house in Noida’s Sector 31 revealed a gruesome discovery: human skulls, skeletal remains, and clothing fragments belonging to 19 missing girls, stuffed into sacks.
Both Pandher and Koli were accused of raping, murdering, and dismembering their victims. They were arrested and sentenced to death. In recent years, however, Koli too has been acquitted in 12 cases.
Families struggle with the verdicts
Jhabbu Lal, whose daughter Jyoti was among the victims, describes the shuttered house as a festering wound. Neither he nor his wife can read, but they learned of the Supreme Court’s verdict through media calls.
“What’s the point of these verdicts if nothing changes?” he asks. He recalls how he and his wife travelled repeatedly from Ghaziabad to Allahabad to Delhi’s courts. “And now? He walks free.”
In its 2023 ruling, the Allahabad High Court heavily criticised the Uttar Pradesh Police and CBI investigations, citing weak evidence, procedural flaws, and “improbable possibilities.” On Wednesday, the Supreme Court dismissed 14 appeals from the CBI and the victims’ families challenging the acquittals. Koli, however, remains in prison, serving a life sentence for the murder of a teenage girl, as upheld by the High Court.
A crime that shook the nation
One of the most infamous criminal investigations in recent Indian history, the Nithari serial killings shook the nation when multiple human remains were uncovered in and around the Noida house in 2006.
The case involved the abduction, sexual assault, and brutal murder of children and young women. Koli was accused of luring children to the house with sweets and chocolates. Investigators alleged that he murdered them, violated their corpses, dismembered the bodies, and in some instances, cooked and consumed their remains. Bones and other body parts were discarded in a drain or the backyard.
Memories of Jyoti
Sitting outside the rented shack he and his wife now occupy in a gated part of the village, Lal recalls how 10-year-old Jyoti helped them iron clothes opposite D5. He remembers exchanging pleasantries with “Pander Sahab” and once noticing blood-stained clothes in the pile Koli handed over. Pandher claimed it was from buying chicken, and Koli echoed the same explanation.
Jyoti never returned home one evening. Her remains were later found in D5’s backyard. “If he wasn’t guilty, why was he held? Why was he jailed for years? Why were those cases reopened and closed repeatedly? Why have we been running to courts for 18 years?” Lal’s voice rises, then breaks. “My life has been spent on this. Now, where do I go?”
A house frozen in memory
In the village, D5 is mentioned in hushed tones. A kilometre away in A block, simply asking for directions prompts instant recognition.
“Oh, you want D5?” a man responds, offering a detailed route.
Those who lived here when the case emerged recall it in fragments. Bhram Singh, a former resident now living in Bulandshahr, says, “Back then, there was nothing here—no market, hardly any houses. Just that bungalow. When children started vanishing, no one suspected anything. But when the news broke, it felt like the ground gave way.”
Today, a new market surrounds D5, with shops, flats, and houses encroaching on either side. Yet the house, or what is left of it, is avoided. “They say if you pass by late at night, you can hear girls screaming,” Bhram adds.
Shyam Singh, who moved into a house opposite D5 in 2015, is more pragmatic. He recalls being in Varanasi when the killings surfaced. “The whole country was shaken. But why dwell on it? Good deeds should be remembered, not the crimes of monsters.”
Families left behind
Lal’s family has since relocated. Their new home, a tin-roofed structure behind high walls in a more developed sector, is close enough for memories of D5 to linger, yet far enough that attention has faded.
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“There used to be protests, candlelit vigils, journalists everywhere. Where are they now?” Lal asks. “We had nothing, yet we fought. And now we’re told there’s no evidence.”
Nineteen years on, the crumbling, vine-covered walls of D5 remain a haunting reminder for the families of the murdered children.
Forensic evidence and findings
Payal was the sole adult victim in the series of murders, with young girls comprising the majority. Post-mortem examinations of the 17 sets of skulls and bones recovered indicated that 11 of the victims were girls. Doctors at Noida Government Hospital noted a “butcher-like precision” in the dismemberment of the bodies.
The reports identified a consistent pattern in the killings. On February 6, 2007, AIIMS confirmed a total of 19 skulls—16 intact and three damaged. Investigators stated that the bodies had been severed into three parts before disposal.
CBI sources alleged that Koli, after strangling the victims, decapitated them and discarded their heads in a drain behind Pandher’s house. They added that he stored viscera in polythene bags before dumping them in a drain to evade detection. The skulls and other remains were later sent to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad for profiling.
