A Serial Killer’s Living Victim

The pitiful predicament of Moninder Singh Pandher, the other accused in the Nithari killings case

There is a reason why serial killers are so rare and it has to do with something more than just the number of killings involved. A general in an army in the middle of a war would have no compunction in ordering thousands of deaths if it were tactically necessary. But it only makes him a hero if he wins the engagement. A serial killer, on the other hand, is someone outside all the structures civilisation has created to ensure order in death. He is immune to that rule by which human society was built—life cannot be taken without reason or authority. The serial killer is terror, puzzle and fascination mixed together, the reason there is an entire bestselling genre of books and movies on the menace.

But when it comes to Moninder Singh Pandher, there is increasingly no mystery, just a unique tragedy. It is hard not to sympathise with him, even though the crime he is associated with has to be the most gruesome in modern Indian history. This Monday, Pandher got bail in five cases of the Nithari killings. There are about eight more murders for which he is still to get bail, which means he will continue to be in jail. His only crime, as it is becoming evident, is that he hired the wrong servant to look after his home in Nithari village in Noida. In December 2006, body parts were recovered from behind the home and investigations later revealed that the servant Surender Koli had killed 15 children and one adult. Koli has got a death sentence in one of the cases. Pandher was acquitted in that one.

Last month, Koli’s mercy petition was rejected by the President. No one seems to doubt that he is a textbook psychopath. But consider some of the reasons the Allahabad High Court judge gave to grant bail to Pandher. They include, ‘…has already been acquitted in almost identical case initiated on almost identical facts and similar evidence…CBI had exonerated the applicant Moninder Singh Pandher for murdering and raping the deceased…Entire case is based upon circumstantial evidence…The confessional statements of co-accused Surendra Koli under section 164 Cr.P.C. does not implicate the applicant… It is stated that there is no satisfactory evidence of prior meeting of minds between both accused to constitute criminal conspiracy…’

In effect, there is really nothing to show that Pandher had a part in the killings beyond owning the home. If he is innocent, Pandher is a man who is a victim of both Koli and the justice system, which can keep a person in a long purgatory between guilt and innocence while grinding along at a snail’s pace. How easily, one realises in retrospect, was Pandher dubbed a ‘monster’ in the beginning by everyone from the media to the police. He was accused of simultaneously being part of an organ theft and a child pornography racket, two crimes that would be a contradiction to each other given that you cannot make porn out of dead organless people. As it eventually turned out, both charges were false.

And yet, he still waits for exoneration because the shock of the crime is so colossal. It was impossible to comprehend how 15 children could be killed in such a fashion, but it needed to be shown that something was being done about it. Getting two serial killers was therefore always better than one.

Moninder Singh PandherNithariSurendra Koli