M A I N   N E W S

City businessman linked to Noida serial killings held
Chitleen Sethi
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 29
The Noida police has arrested two persons, including a Chandigarh businessman, in connection with the disappearance of nearly 38 children from Nithari village in the past one and a half years.

The Noida police here had dug out skeletal remains of several children from a nullah in the same area following which it arrested a suspect, Satish, alias Surendra Kohli, last night.

The police told agencies that the second person, Moninder Singh, a transporter from Chandigarh in whose house at Noida Surendra worked as a servant, was arrested today. A .12 bore licensed gun along with some documents have also been reportedly seized from his possession. The house has also been sealed.

The Chandigarh police also searched the Chandigarh Sector 27 residence of Moninder Singh here this evening. Soon after the news of his arrest spread in the city, media thronged Moninder Singh’s residence and remained there since afternoon. The family of Mohinder Singh, however, did not allow anyone inside and kept their door shuts to mediapersons.

DSP Malik, after inspecting the house, said nothing suspicious was found in the house. He added that Ms Devinder Kaur, wife of Moninder Singh, her son Karan, servant Prem, gardener Om Prakash and his wife were present in the house. He added that the local police had received no official information from the Noida police. The family questioned the police action of searching their house without any orders.

Skeletal remains of eight children had earlier been found from a nullah close to a water tank in Nithari village in Sector 31, Noida. The police told the agencies that further search began after the arrest of Surender. Surendra, said to be mentally deranged, during interrogation admitted to having raped and killed some of the missing girls of the area and later throwing the bodies in the nullah.

Surendra was arrested after a mobile phone belonging to a girl, Deepika, alias Payal, who went missing from Nithari village in May this year, was found in his possession. After killing the girl, he had kept her mobile with himself but later lodged a complaint with the police after he lost it. After the police traced the mobile, a few days ago and scanned its details, Surendra’s name popped up after which he was detained last night.

Hundreds of people, including parents of the children, gathered outside the house in Sector 31, Noida, as news of the police finding skeletons of missing children spread.

A report from Noida said, hundreds of people, including parents of children who have gone missing from the area, gathered outside a house in Sector 31 of this township as news of the police finding skeletons of missing children spread.

As excavators were put on the job to scour a nullah in the area where the police found skeletons and clothes of children allegedly killed by Satish, alias Surinder,who worked as a domestic help in the house, anxious parents of missing kids reached the spot, bracing themselves for bad the worst.

Ram Kishan, father of three-and-a-half-year-old Harsh, who went missing 11 months ago, was among the large crowd that gathered outside the house.

"My son was out playing on this very road when he went missing. I am scared for him now," he said.

Another woman, in tears, said her daughter had gone missing from the area three months ago.

Inconsolable, she could barely talk, not giving her name or her daughter's name. Sunil, father of a 10-year-old girl who went missing

in April this year in the locality, said she was last seen near the address.

He complained the police had taken his complaint casually, not registering an FIR and told him that his daughter would come back on her own.