Koli gets death in Nithari case

Convict accuses CBI of intentionally involving him to give a clean chit to Pandher

For 38-year-old Koli, a domestic help of businessman and accused Moninder Singh Pandher, it was second death sentence out of the total of 19  killings in 2006.

“Koli was accused of killing a lot of young girls and woman. The whole country was shocked. The court took note of his brutality and considered it as a rarest of rare crime and awarded death sentence to him,” CBI lawyer J P Sharma said.

Special CBI judge A K Singh handed down the capital punishment under Section 302 (murder) of IPC along with life imprisonment under Section 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) besides imposing a fine of Rs 3,000.

Koli, who was present in court, broke down as Singh pronounced the order.
Koli and Pandher were on February 13, 2009, sentenced to the death in the Rimpa Haldar case in the first verdict in the Nithari killings. However, Pandher was acquitted by the Allahabad High Court on September 11, last year.

Koli accused the CBI of intentionally involving him to give a clean chit to Pandher, who, he alleged, used to entertain government officials and politicians at his residence. A charge denied by the CBI lawyer.

“Pandher was never accused in this case and probably will not be,” Sharma said.
The court had on May 4 convicted Koli in the case.

Koli was also sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment each under Section 376 (rape), Section 511 (attempting to commit offenses punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment) and Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offense, or giving false information to screen offender) of IPC.

“All sentences will run concurrently,” the lawyer for the victim’s family Sanjay Tyagi said.
Nineteen cases related to rape and murder of children and a young woman, whose body parts were found in a drain behind Pandher’s bungalow in Nithari, Noida in Uttar Pradesh in 2006.

The CBI, which took over the probe from local police, named Koli as the lone accused in the charge sheet and gave a clean chit to Pandher.

In all 46 witnesses were produced in 113 hearings in the Arti case. Koli has been charged in all the 19 cases while Pandher is a co-accused in 6 cases.

The court was to deliver its verdict in the Arti case on May 5 but it was postponed till
Wednesday following the strike by lawyers.

Tyagi, who represented Arti’s father Durga Prasad, said after the judgement that he would move an application against Pandher in the Allahabad High Court for his alleged involvement in the girl’s killing.