Ghaziabad, May 12
A special CBI court here today awarded death sentence to Surinder Koli, a convict in the sensational Nithari killings case, for rape and murder of seven-year-old Arti.

The death sentence to 38-year-old Koli, a domestic help of businessman and accused Moninder Singh Pandher, was awarded by special CBI judge A K Singh, in the second of the 19 cases of the Nithari killings.

“Koli was accused of killing young girls. 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.

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

On May 4, the court had held Koli guilty of murder, abduction and tampering with evidence. Arti had gone missing on September 25, 2006. The CBI had filed a chargesheet in January 2007.
Koli, who was present in court, broke down as Singh pronounced the order. He described his punishment as miscarriage of justice and said he would appeal against the verdict as he had been falsely implicated. He termed the judgment “andha kanoon”. 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 CBI lawyer.

“Pandher was never accused in this case and probably will not be,” Sharma said.

Koli was also sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment each under Section 376 (rape), Section 511 (attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment) and Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) of the IPC.

“All sentences will run concurrently,” the lawyer for the victim’s family Sanjay Tyagi said.

The 19 cases relate to rape and murder of children and a young woman, whose body parts were found in a drain behind Pandher’s D-31 bungalow in Nithari in Noida in Uttar Pradesh in 2006.

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

In all, 46 witnesses were produced in 113 hearings in the Arti case. Koli has been charged with rape, abduction and murder 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 today following a strike by lawyers.

Tyagi, who represented Arti’s father Durga Prasad, said he would move an application against Pandher for his alleged involvement in the girl’s killing. “We will move an application against Pandher in the Allahabad High Court,” he said. — PTI