Nithari: Truth, Lies, and Murders, the riveting documentary by Discovery+, takes us back to the 2006 Nithari killings that shocked the entire nation and, let me add, set a new low bar for botched police and CBI investigations. My blood boils whenever I watch any kind of news related to that incident, and though I could never understand the pain those parents must have gone through, I know how frustrating and helpless they might have felt when they witnessed the incompetency of law enforcement officers and how corrupt the system was. But this time around there was a new reason why Discovery+ released this documentary, i.e., both the prime accused in the case (Moninder Pandher and Surender Koli) were acquitted by the apex authority. While Pandher was acquitted in 2023, Koli was released in November 2025. Now, before we start calling the judiciary incompetent, let me tell you, it was the right judgement to make. I say that because one cannot be sentenced to death or held guilty based on such a botched investigation. The court cannot pass judgment based on public perception. It is necessary to state here that the media has the liberty to hold their own trial and give their own opinions, but the apex authority or any other judicial body is held to higher standards. Their judgments solely rely on the evidence presented in front of them, be that a forensic evaluation or a confession by the perpetrator. So when evidence is tampered with, people are tortured to confess to the crimes, and the authorities working on the ground make sure to hide the truth from the people, then an honorable judge cannot do much about it. From the preliminary inquiry to the most important piece of evidence, i.e., the confession of Koli, everything was tampered with, and it was bound to lose its credibility.
The media manufactured its own narrative, the CBI told a different story, and the experts who analyzed the evidence refuted the theories presented by the CBI. Certain people said that the CBI was trying to protect somebody really influential, and so they didn’t present key evidence in the court. There was a maid who worked at Pandher’s house who went missing all of a sudden after the CBI took her statement, and her testimony was never presented by the CBI. At the end, the case became a mess, and now apparently there is no accused in the case. The parents of those poor victims, like Jhabbu Laal Kanaujiya and his wife, Sunita (who also featured in the documentary), still don’t have any answers. Their daughter, together with many others, was abducted, raped, tortured, and then butchered, and they still don’t know who did it. So let’s find out what the key factors were because of which Moninder Pandher and Surender Koli were acquitted by the court of law. The irony of this entire case was that some 20 years later, it was they who said that justice was served, and not the parents of the victims.
Was Surendra Koli forced to give a confession?
It is to be noted that Surendra Koli was already found not guilty in 12 out of 13 cases against him. Justices Syed Aftab Hussain Rizvi and Ashwani Mishra of the Allahabad High Court brought to attention a few facts on October 16th, 2023, because of which they said that Koli’s confession couldn’t be considered to be reliable.
Now, Koli was kept in police custody for more than 60 days, and he was tortured in the most barbaric manner. Koli, in his confession, stated how he was beaten and then made to memorize the names of the girls that he had abducted and killed. Also, the most important thing was that he said later that the CBI had trained him for a week and asked him to say the exact right things in front of the magistrate. Then, later, there was no legal aide who could direct him about what he should do. We saw that an expert analyzed his confession in the documentary and stated that he was saying all those things out of his free will. Also, during the narcoanalysis and brain fingerprinting, the expert said that time and again Koli said that he hadn’t killed all the girls by himself. He also accepted that he had tried eating the human meat once but wasn’t able to do it. In fact, I don’t understand how the lower courts passed judgment based on that confession video. Even a layman like me saw that the man was brainwashed, and he was not in the right state of mind to assess what he should do in that situation.
Why did the police lie about finding the bodies?
Police officer Gajendra Singh and his colleagues from the Nithari police department lied about finding the bodies in the drain next to house D-5, when in reality it was the locals who found them. After Koli was arrested, in December 2006, on the charge of abducting and killing a female escort, he took the officers to the drain in between houses D-5 and D-6 and dug up the dead body himself and surrendered it to the police. The police ideally should have dug the entire site, but they just took it and left from there. Later in the morning the locals arrived at the spot, and they themselves found most of the skeletons of victims. To date, the police do not admit that they abandoned the crime scene unattended, and they stick to the fact that it was them who found everything. I am quite sure that had the locals not dug the site and found bodies, the police wouldn’t have come back to search the drain. They would have just pinned the blame on Koli, and nobody would have found out about the other kids.
The incompetency and carelessness of the police department even at such a primary stage affected the entire outcome of the case. Their sole motive was to torture Surendra and make him confess to the crimes. They didn’t want to find out if there were others involved with him. They just wanted to work as little as possible and get done with the case. To date, nobody knows if Moninder Pandher was present in Noida on 29th December or not. He had a strong alibi, as his phone recording suggested that he was somewhere else, totally unaware that his house caretakers had killed people. But then there were people who said Pandher was equally involved in the crime, and they even claim that in the police station he came and apologized for the crimes he had committed. All I can say here is that the police made a mockery of the entire case.
Did Koli butcher bodies in his room?
It was stated that Surendra Koli took the dead bodies to his room and cut them up there. Now, if there were 19 bodies slaughtered there, there would have been some evidence that would have suggested that. There should have been blood stains on the walls and in the kitchen sink, but the experts couldn’t find any such thing. There was no incriminating trace in any place where Koli stated that the bodies were dismembered, and so the question arises: why did he lie? He probably lied because he was pressured, but it also means that either Koli didn’t slaughter them there, or they were taken somewhere else and then butchered. Also, the way the bodies were dismembered, it seemed as if Koli was quite an expert. An examination was also conducted later, and the experts stated that he had a good knowledge of human anatomy and he could exactly mark the mummy and tell them how he dismembered his victims. Koli later in his testimony stated that the mummy in the mortuary was already marked, and he was asked to put a mark on the same points.
There was no evidence found that could substantiate organ trafficking rumors, but if, hypothetically, we consider them to be true, then it could have happened that the bodies were taken someplace else so that the organs could be taken out in the correct manner. The name of Dr. Naveen Chaudhry, who lived in D-6, also came up during the investigation, but the man was never charged with any crime. He even declined to talk to the filmmakers in this documentary. But during that time, in 2007, when his name came up, there were speculations about him being the third accomplice, but soon enough the CBI rejected those claims. So to summarize, nobody knew where the bodies were butchered, or primarily who did it.
Did Koli And Pandher Have An Accomplice?
What was most baffling was that the axe and two knives identified as the murder weapons didn’t match the victim’s injuries, indicating they couldn’t have been used to dismember the body. Basically, at the end, it would be safe to say that there was a counterargument or some evidence to refute every theory that was proposed by either the prosecution or the defense. And so the police, the CBI, and the other government bodies couldn’t prove guilt on the part of either of the accused. This generally happens when either the people are actually incompetent (which I don’t think they are) or they are trying to hide something so hard that they are ready to let people question their credibility. There were times when it actually felt like the CBI and the police had made their narrative in their minds, and they wanted the people to go with it.
Even after nearly 19 years of investigations and court proceedings, hearings, witness statements, and media reports, the people of Nithari are still left without answers. They don’t know who killed their children or why they were treated like their lives didn’t matter. Many still believe that if the police had acted when the first abduction complaints were made, the outcome might have been different. And perhaps, had a child from those big bungalows gone missing, then I am pretty sure the response of the police would not have been the same. It’s a heartbreaking reality of the country we live in, and nothing can ever justify the loss those parents suffered.
