“Ab police wale baar-baar humein bewakoof nahi bata payenge,” (Now, the policemen won’t be able to call us fools) he said after Special Judge Rama Jain held Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surinder Koli guilty of rape and murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar.

For the families of victims of the Nithari killings, justice has come as a vindication of their decision to fight against the culprits of one of the most gruesome serial killings in recent times.

Speaking to Newsline over the phone, Anil Haldar, father of Rimpa, said, “We are happy at the decision and relieved that the suffering has ended; both for us and probably for our murdered daughter.”

In the 19 cases filed in the the Nithari killings, seven families had accused Pandher, who lived at D-5 in Sector-31, barely a few steps from Jhabbu’s ‘thela’. In the other cases, the CBI had proved Koli guilty of rape and murder and given a clean chit to Pandher.

Of the eight witnesses, one backtracked from his statements while another died under mysterious circumstances — Jatin Sarkar was considered the most important witness by lawyer Khalid Khan representing the victims’ kin.

Sarkar had gone back to his village in Murshidabad district of West Bengal and died there. His wife Bandana Sarkar had alleged foul play and filed a case.

Nandlal, the witness who changed his statements, was charged with perjury by a local court in Ghaziabad after Special Judge Jain, who pronounced the verdict today, appeared as a witness against him.

NCW omitted Rimpa’s name from list of victims
The National Commission for Women, which looked at the reports of the missing children much before the killings were unearthed, had omitted the name of Rimpa from the list of missing children. It had written to the Prime Minister’s Office, stating that Rimpa was “in Nepal and had been doing well” (Newsline has a copy of the letter).

Commodore (retired) Lokesh Batra, an RTI activist who worked with social activist Nirmala Deshpande on Nithari, said, “The NCW members had claimed that no complaints had been received from the victims’ kin in 2005 even though many social activists and the victims’ kin had been writing to them; this has been exposed through letters of communication between them (obtained through RTI).”

The NCW had subsequently, denied information to Batra stating that sharing the details “did not appear in public interest”.

In the case, Dinesh Yadav, Circle Officer of the Noida police and the first investigator in the case, was charged under the Gangsters Act by a Ghaziabad court (for rioting and threatening witnesses) in July last year. He had also been accused of presenting a ‘fake’ case diary, which had Pandher’s confession, to the CBI court (Newsline has a copy).