Nithari Horror: Families of Missing Children Question Justice After Acquittal

Nearly 20 years after police found the bodies of 19 women and children near a bungalow dubbed India's house of horrors, the case is back in the spotlight - because Surinder Koli, the last of the two men convicted, has walked free.

On 12 November, the Supreme Court acquitted him in the final case pending against him, accepting his claim that his confession - which included admissions of cannibalism and necrophilia - had been extracted under torture.

The case dates back to December 2006, when police identified a bungalow in Noida, a suburb of the capital Delhi, as the site where women and children were killed and dismembered, and some allegedly raped. Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and Surinder Koli, his servant, were arrested after body parts were found near their home.

The revelations triggered national outrage. Parents accused police of ignoring complaints that children had been going missing for more than two years. The case also exposed India's deep social divides: this occurred in an affluent enclave, while the victims were mostly from the neighbouring slums of Nithari, home to poor migrant families.

The two men were convicted of rape and murder and spent years on death row. Moninder Singh Pandher was freed in 2023, with the court eventually finding there to be a lack of evidence. Now his servant is out of jail too, bringing to an end the long judicial process in one of India's most disturbing criminal cases.

The BBC visited Nithari a few days after the judgement, and found that most of the victims' families no longer lived there. Two, who remain in the neighbourhood, said they were trying to come to terms with the court order and wondering - if Pandher and Koli didn't, then who killed our children?

In interviews since his release, Moninder Singh Pandher has said he was innocent. Surinder Koli has not been seen in public since leaving prison and has not said anything, but his lawyer Yug Mohit Chaudhry said all the evidence against him was fabricated.

After 19 years, in the 13 cases in which he had been sentenced to death, he had already been proven innocent in 12 of them. One case was left, in which five courts had declared him guilty and gave the death sentence.

Today, the Supreme Court has overturned those earlier four or five judgments in that case as well… These were extremely serious charges, but all the evidence was fabricated, Mr Chaudhry told PTI news agency.

This poor man was framed to protect some powerful person. Every bit of evidence was fake, not a single piece could justify a conviction… You should ask this question to the CBI [the federal Central Bureau of Investigation], because it is clear that the CBI, despite knowing who the real culprit was, created false evidence against these innocent people and trapped them. Ask these questions to the CBI, he added. The CBI has not commented on the acquittal.

Many in Nithari are finding it very difficult to come to terms with the verdict.

If they are innocent, then how come they were in prison for 18 years? asks Sunita Kanaujia, tears rolling down her cheeks. Her 10-year-old daughter Jyoti went missing in the summer of 2005. DNA tests later confirmed that she was among the victims. God will not forgive those who killed her, she says.

Sunita's husband Jhabbu Lal Kanaujia, who was instrumental in unearthing the serial killings, says he felt utter despair after hearing of Surinder Koli's acquittal and burned all the papers related to the case he had collected over the years.

For years, he worked as a press-wallah - ironing clothes of the locality's affluent residents - right outside Moninder Singh Pandher's house.

For 15 months after his daughter went missing, he visited the police station regularly.

When someone goes missing, there's no closure. It becomes a wound. It festers. You always wonder where they are, in what condition? he says.

On a cold December day in 2006, he was one of the people who climbed down into a sewer to dig out skulls, bones and limbs. The number of skulls, he says, was many times higher than the 19 cases that went to court.

Today, the questions he keeps asking repeatedly are: If they are not guilty, then who is? And what happened to our children then?

The acquittal of the two men has snatched away his sense of closure and opened old wounds. But, he says, he's no longer certain that he has any fight left in him. I'm an old man, I'm a broken man, he says.

In its order, the top court said that the offences in Nithari were heinous, and the suffering of the families is beyond measure.

The judges acquitted Surinder Koli, saying courts had earlier mainly relied on his confession while convicting him, but they said they did not believe it had been voluntary. They noted it was recorded after he had been in custody for 60 days and it appeared he was being tutored. The presence of the police investigator near him raised serious questions, the judges said.

The court criticised the police and investigating agencies for carrying out a flawed investigation, marked by negligence and delay because of which the true offender had not been identified.

The order also pointed out that the investigators did not look into leads, including the organ-trade angle flagged by a governmental committee of the Ministry of Women and Child Development. Reports at the time had suggested that the bodies had been cut with surgical precision.

Jhabbu Lal says unless the erring policemen are arrested, we won't get justice.

The anger against police in Nithari is not new. When parents of missing children approached police, their standard response - particularly to parents of girls - was that they had eloped with a lover, says Pappu Lal, whose daughter Rachna was among the victims.

She went missing on 10 April 2006 after she went to visit her grandparents who lived two houses away from the bungalow number D5. After searching for her in the neighbourhood, the family went to the police who told them that their eight-year-old had most likely eloped with a lover. Police did not respond to BBC questions on this.

Pappu Lal says he travelled to other cities and states to look for Rachna. His search ended eight months later in the lane behind D5 where Rachna's clothes and slippers were found.

After the first set of skulls and bones were discovered, the residents stormed the house and attacked the police. Two senior officials were transferred and six policemen suspended.

The case was then handed over to the federal investigators.

If the police had taken action on time, Rachna could have been saved. Many children could have been saved, says Pappu Lal.

It's a sad state of affairs, says Aruna Arora, who was the president of the Residents' Welfare Association for the area in 2006. How can anyone have faith in the criminal justice system any more?

Ms Arora says she was deeply disturbed by reports of children disappearing in her area and went to meet senior police officials and the district magistrate.

But these children were all from poor families so no-one took it seriously. It was only after bones and skulls and body parts were found that the authorities got into the action, she says. Police did not respond to a request for comment.

Pappu Lal takes us around the neighbourhood to point out the different spots that figure prominently in the murders.

D5 - the squat bungalow - now sits derelict, out of place among a row of plush, well-kept homes.

Abandoned for years, it is scarred by soot from a 2014 fire that gutted parts of the structure. Its entrance is sealed with a crude brick-and-mud wall, and an overgrown bougainvillea, bright with pink blooms, spills over the front boundary. In the open sewer outside, plastic bags and bottles drift through charcoal-grey sludge, its stench thick in the air.

We then walk to the rear of the house where Pappu Lal points out the area where body parts and victims' belongings were found.

I still cannot forget the horrors of those days, he says, voice choking with emotion. But he is determined to not give up. I will go to the police and lodge a fresh complaint. They have to find out who killed our children.

He now wants to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to seek their help in getting justice.

Our fight now is with the government. They also have some responsibility to ensure that criminals are punished. Aren't our children India's children? he asks.

Anupam Nagolia of Better World Foundation charity that helped Pappu Lal and other victims by arranging lawyers for them, however, says that it seems to be the end of the road for the victims' families.

The judgement was given by the highest bench in the highest court in the country. I don't see any other forum where they can appeal now.

Some legal experts say the families do have one final option - they can petition the Supreme Court to order a reinvestigation.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Madan Lokur says it's unlikely to yield any result. Because such a lot of time has elapsed, the evidence would have disappeared and the possibility of a reinvestigation is impossible.