O
n November 12, Surinder Koli was acquitted by the Supreme Court in the last of the 16 cases linked to the 2006 Nithari killings. On December 29, 2006, skeletal remains of several children were discovered from a drain behind the house of a businessman, Mohinder Singh Pandher, at Nithari in Noida. The silence following his release suggests a deep unease: not because guilt was disproved with precision, but because the evidence was tainted or insufficiently collected.
The problem becomes even more glaring when we recall that Mohinder Singh Pandher, the owner of the house where several of the offences allegedly took place, had already been acquitted years ago after spending 14 years in custody as an undertrial. When both accused in a case of such gravity are set free because the investigation could not withstand legal scrutiny, it is not a clean acquittal. It is a failed prosecution. This is a double injustice — towards the accused and towards the victims.
