PRAYAGRAJ: The Allahabad High Court pulled up the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for its failure to produce the postmortem report of a victim of the gruesome Nithari killings case.
Hearing an appeal filed by Surender Koli against his conviction and sentence of death penalty in the 2006 Noida serial murders case, a division bench comprising Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Sameer Jain warned that if the earlier orders of court are not complied with, then a responsible officer of the concerned department of CBI shall be personally present before it to submit explanation, and directed that the case be put up along with other connected matters on March 7, 2022.
Koli had been found guilty of rape and murder of several girl children between 2005 and 2006 and was sentenced to death. An application was moved on behalf of Koli under section 91 of criminal procedure code (CrPC) read with section 294 of the code for production of postmortem report pertaining to one of the victims.
CBI had failed to produce the reports despite being given several chances by the court. When the matter was taken up on Monday, the counsel appearing for CBI stated that he has prepared a draft reply and the same has been sent for vetting to the department concerned and response is awaited.
When the court asked him to give a specific date by which the response would be filed, he stated that the matter may be taken up on March 7.
On this, the court termed the approach of CBI as casual and observed, “On our question as to why there is so much delay in submitting a reply or producing postmortem report, we could not get a cogent explanation from the counsel, who represents CBI. This casual approach on the part of CBI is clearly unacceptable.”
The infamous Nithari murders were committed between 2005 and 2006 and had come to light in December 2006 when skeletons were found in a drain near a house in Nithari, Noida. Moninder Pandher was the owner of the house and Koli was his domestic help.
Subsequently, the CBI registered 16 cases in charges of murder, abduction, rape besides destruction of evidence against Koli in all of them, and against Pandher in one for immoral trafficking.
The Ghaziabad court, however, summoned Pandher in five other cases after several victims’ families approached it.
The court had found Koli guilty in all the 11 cases and awarded death sentence to him, appeals against which are pending in higher courts.
