NEW DELHI: Supreme Court docket on Tuesday allowed a healing petition filed by Surendra Koli difficult his conviction and loss of life sentence in one of many Nithari homicide instances. With this resolution, Koli will now stroll free, as he has already been acquitted in all different Nithari instances.The Nithari killings got here to gentle on December 29, 2006, after skeletal stays of eight kids have been found in a drain behind the home of businessman. Moninder Singh Pandher in Noida’s Nithari village.
A bench comprising Chief Justice BR Gavai and Justices Surya Kant and Vikram Nath handed the order after listening to Koli’s petition in open courtroom. Koli had been convicted for the rape and homicide of a 15-year-old woman, and his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court docket in February 2011. His assessment plea was dismissed in 2014.In January 2015, the Allahabad excessive courtroom commuted his loss of life sentence to life imprisonment, citing an inordinate delay in deciding his mercy petition. Later, in October 2023, the identical courtroom acquitted each Koli and Pandher in a number of Nithari instances, overturning the loss of life sentences awarded by a trial courtroom in 2017.Koli was acquitted in 12 instances and Pandher in two. Though the CBI and victims’ households challenged these acquittals earlier than the Supreme Court docket, the highest courtroom dismissed all 14 appeals on July 30 this yr.