Nithari monster Surinder Koli will be hanged this week in Meerut for the brutal rape, killing and axing of women and children in 2006. But for locals and authorities, the brain behind this gory crime, Moninder Singh Pandher, has escaped the ultimate punishment. Victims’ parents have been compensated economically but what do they do with their nightmares and murmuring shadows of the ones they have lost, they ask DEEBASHREE MOHANTY as she revisits the location
It’s 6.30 am and 35-year-old Shalu Awasthi walks hurriedly towards a ‘kothi’ in Sector 31, Noida. Come rain or sunshine, she has not missed a single day at work for the past two-years. Despite her unkempt hair and dirty clothes, people who work in and around Sector 31 don’t wince at her appearance. She squats in front of the colony road leading to D5, a bungalow which has been lying locked since 2007, and starts her daily ritual.
She places her daughter Pinki’s photo frame and keeps it on the pavement. Takes out a candle and a bunch of Cycle brand agarbattis and chants — ‘Pinki ke bereham hathyaon ko sazaa do. (Those behind the brutal killing of my daughter be punished severely).’
People say she has gone crazy. But when she demands that there should be no place for the murderers in heaven or hell, you tend to agree with her. “They took away my daughter and killed me in the process too,” she says.
She has no job, no income, no family and is being treated for her mental illness at the Yathartha hospital in Noida. Tell her that Surinder Koli is going to be hanged on September 12 and Shalu bursts into a smile, froth oozing from her mouth. “Woh to murga hai. Bade saheb ka kya hogaIJ,” she asks hysterically, referring to Moninder Singh Pandher.
Many believe that Pandher, who owns the D5 house where girls were repeatedly raped, killed, sliced up, their bones dipped in a chemical solvent before being dumped in the drain, was the man behind the blood-curdling Nithari killings. like Shalu, the localites say that the hanging of Koli is only justice half done.
Shalu’s world collapsed when Koli confessed in 2009 to having raped Pinki (she was 13 then) and strangulating her with a rope before cutting her body into tiny pieces.
“Pinki had been missing from Nithari for three weeks and Shalu Tai would visit the local police station twice daily to know about her whereabouts. The cops were convinced that Pinki had run away for a better life. Tai was inconsolable initially but when she got no news of her teenage daughter, she too reconciled to the police presumption that her only child had fled. When the Nithari killings began to surface, someone informed Tai that Koli was identifying his victims. She sent her brother with a picture of Pinki and her worst fears came true. Koli identified Pinki and also gave the cops that gory details of her murder. life has been a nightmare for Tai ever since. Her husband, a rickshaw puller, ran away with the Rs 5 lakh compensation and sold the plot of land for Rs 2.7 lakh. He eloped with another woman and is leading a life with her. When Tai returned to her village in Jamshedpur, no one accepted her. Even her parents shooed her away. The kothis in Sector 29 where she was working removed her from her job,” Shikha Verma, who works as a cook in Sector 28 opposite DPS Noida School, tells you.
On the day Koli’s verdict date was announced, there were muted celebrations in Nithari. Most families who lost their children to this serial killing have left or have been coerced to leave. Those left behind tread cautiously. No one utters Pandher or Koli’s names, considering it to be a bad omen.
“D5 is a monster house for all of us. No one crosses that house after 7 pm. We can hear painful cries coming from within the house sometimes. It is almost as if a girl is being tortured and murdered and we can’t do anything about it,” Papulal who lives in the D2 servant quarter, says. He works as a guard in a nearby sector and is the only one who has yet not sold the plot of land he got as compensation from the Government. His three-and-a-half-year-old daughter was brutalised and dumped in the drain and it was Papulal who dug out the remains from there in 2007.
“Her yellow polka dot frock stuck to her decomposed body. The limbs had been cut off and the head shaved. What kind of a human being does this,” he asks. Although time has somewhat healed his wounds, he still gets very emotional while talking about the Nithari killing. “I would rather have my daughter alive and playing in my arms than have the money and land. Her mother is still in shock. And, no, we are not celebrating the hanging of Koli. We’ll sleep well only the day Pandher is hanged too,” he says. There has not been a single night that this family has not seen an apparition of their little girl calling out for them.
The same goes for driver Ashok Kumar who lost his nine-year-old daughter. It has been seven years but Koli’s hanging is no closure. “I don’t think there can ever be any closure for parents who saw what was unearthed that day. All I got was my daughter’s chappals and panties strewn at the back entrance of D5. The rest of the body was in parts. My first visit into the house still gives me nightmares. It was like a hospital where live operations are conducted,” he recalls.
Kumar has opened a shoes and clothes outlet in Nithari market but life hasn’t moved for him. The shop has a picture of his daughter hanging on one side and a family photo in an expensive frame on the other. “She was a bright student and wanted to pursue her education in a private school. I had promised her a better life but see what happened,” he says, hiding tears.
It was Kumar and dhobi Jhabhulal who had rushed to RWA President SC Mishra with evidence that something murky had been happening inside D5. Girls went into the house, never to return. “It was around 9 pm when Jhabhulal came to me wanting to talk about something zaroori. His daughter Jyoti was the second victim but back then Jhabu had no idea about this. He was panting when he told me that he had spotted Koli stalking girls and inviting them home. The problem was that the girls never came back. I was curious but had no clue we would stumble upon something as gory as what we did,” Mishra who retired as president of the association in 2009, says.
The environment in the Sector 31 RWA office is sombre. While the authorities heave a sigh of relief about the hanging date of Koli, they are unhappy that the mastermind did not meet the same fate. “Koli was just another criminal carrying out his master’s orders. It is Pandher we want. The house had modern CCTV fittings, the latest surgical tools and medical technology. The terrace had a huge tumbler of a chemical solvent. All this suggests Pandher was behind the crime.
With Koli gone, can we hope for the rope for Pandher as well,” Anjula Chhabaria, general secretary, says. She tells you that D5 looks and exudes negative vibes. “I used to be a regular at that house when Shalu Jindal was there. She had kept the home very well. But later she sold it to Pandher and all hell broke loose.
“Pandher’s wife did not stay here so none of us went visiting to his house. But after the crime came out in the open, I dared to take a peek. I couldn’t go beyond the drawing area which eked of dirty things. The house smelled of blood,” Chhabaria recalls. The society will have a silent prayer meeting the day Koli is hanged and they will pray that Pandher, too, meets the same fate.
Elsewhere in Nithari, the jhuggi and clusters were celebrating the impending hanging in their own way. The maids conducted a ceremony in one of the pucca houses in the cluster. Women had gathered to pray for the shanti of all those who were brutally killed.
“Their aatma will be released in the true sense only when Pandher is brought to justice. Phaansi ki saza bahut kam hai uske liye. Why can’t they burn him aliveIJ We want him to suffer before dying,” the women say. The pooja was also conducted to appease the spirits of those young girls who according to the residents still lurk in the dark.
The one man who is extremely pleased about this news related to Koli is Jhabhulal who broke this sensational crime to the world. “He took away my life. He is a shaitan. Koli was always a bad influence. He had wanted me to work with him on a project which would fetch lots of money. Thankfully, I didn’t.
“Otherwise he would have made me slice up my own daughter. I can never forgive him. Usne hum sab ki roshni churayi hai. Usko to narak bhi nahin naseeb hoga. He would peer at innocent girls from within Pandher’s house,” Jhabhulal who continues to visit Sector 31 houses to collect clothes for ironing, says.
Jhabhulal has sold the compensation plot but saved the compensation money. He prefers to keep himself busy to take his mind off everything that he had found in that drain all those years ago.
After the Nithari happenings, Jhabhulal has become the eyes and ears of the colony. “Ab mein sabki khabar rakhta hoon,” he says. “Aaj mein khush hoon. Koli gaya, Pandher bhi jayega,” he says.
Meanwhile, there are a host of servants who still see shadows of the past near D5. Most people have had sightings of Aarti, a Nithari victim. Others, like Ashok Kumar, swear that on a silent night he can still hear screams and muted sobs coming from within that haunted house. “It’s as if the spirits haven’t left that place. They are waiting to be heard,” Kumar says.
‘My worst nightmare was the bloodied sack’
SC Mishra, ex-president of RWA Sector 31 who was instrumental in unearthing the Nithari killings, recounts the incident and its fallout on him
The Nithari case has taken a huge toll on me. Not just because of all the blood and gore associated with it but also because of the political wars that took place over it and because I got unnecessarily dragged into them. Being the society president at that time, I thought it was my duty to help out. But at the end of it all, I was left fighting a lone battle. It gives me a shiver every time I recall the happenings of December 2006-January 2007 and Koli’s death is definitely no closure for anyone.
When Ram Krishna and Ashok Kumar who live in the servant quarters in Sector 31 approached me with the problem of their girls having gone missing from within 500 metres of D5, Sector 31, I requested then SSP Rathore to place a policeman for vigil outside Pandher’s house. Nothing much emerged from this exercise.
But my ordinary routine suddenly took a U-turn when Jhabulal said he has seen bloodied human remains outside the bylanes of D5. Between December 29, 2006 and January 2007, the police sent an ATS team to dig out more into the happenings in the society. Koli was picked up for questioning in 2006 and he admitted to have killed and raped two victims. He also helped the police find the remains of his victims. We thought the case was over. But soon, a lot other skeletons were discovered. The CBI took over on January 12, 2007 and then the entire truth came out.
The dates and the happenings are etched on my mind forever. Jhabhulal, Ram Krishna and I decided to help the special team unearth the drain and the findings were so horrifying that Ram Krishna left midway. The first bloody sack and its contents are still my worst nightmare.
Rimpy had been just married and the decomposed body in that sack was her. She had been killed only 24 hours before being discovered in the by-lane of D5 so the blood and stench was still fresh. Her head had been severed but packed alongside. The severed portion was still oozing blood. She still had a bindi on her forehead and sindoor in her maang. That image has haunted me ever since. Koli’s hanging date only revives the painful memories and the hard work we put in to ensure that the accused were brought to book. I have attended all witness sessions and gave testimony at least 60 times. But what hit me the hardest was when the then Mayawati Government slapped a bribery and fraud charge on me, Jhabhulal and Papulal.
I got a call around midnight saying that I had been charged for fraud. I got entangled into a Mayawati-Mulayam battle. The people I had been helping in Nithari thought I had betrayed them. They stopped taking me seriously called me bikau. That hurt. I am still struggling with this. Koli’s hanging is not enough but it is a step in the right direction.
(As told to Deebashree Mohanty)
