A special CBI court on Tuesday in Ghaziabad held businessman Moninder Singh Pandher's domestic help Surender Koli guilty in the rape and murder of seven-year-old Arti in the second of the 19 cases of sensational Nithari killings.
Special Additional District and Session Judge A K Singh, who convicted Koli, 38, in the Arti murder case, will pronounce the quantum of sentence tomorrow.
It is the second of the 19 cases of 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.
Koli and Pandher were on February 13, 2009 sentenced to death in the Rimpa Haldar case. However, Pandher was later acquitted by the Allahabad High Court on September 11, 2009. "Koli has been found guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) of Indian Penal Code," Koli's lawyer J P Singh said. Koli was named as the lone accused in the charge sheet filed by CBI which gave a clean chit to Pandher after it took over the probe into killings from the local police.
However, Arti's father Durga Prasad accused the CBI of not allowing him to give a complete statement which, he claimed, could have nailed Pandher. "Until now CBI has not allowed me to give my complete statements. If I had given it, then the court would have found Pandher guilty... Pandher and Koli were co-conspirators," Prasad said. In all, 46 witnesses were produced in 113 hearings in the murder of Arti.
Koli has been charged with rape, abduction and murder in all 19 cases while Pandher is co-accused in six cases. PTI
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