The Nithari killings have remained one of the most disturbing criminal cases in India’s recent memory for nearly two decades. Between 2005 and 2006, several women and children vanished from Nithari in Noida.
Their skeletal remains were later found in drains behind houses D-5 and D-6. They were believed to have been sexually assaulted, dismembered, and even eaten.
The case led to the arrest of the homeowner, Moninder Singh Pandher, and his domestic worker, Surendra Koli. Both have now been acquitted by the Supreme Court. But the core question continues to linger: Who killed the children?
"As far as murder and rape are concerned, no agency had named me as an accused,” Pandher told Shams Tahir Khan of Aaj Tak and India Today in a televised interview. “I was made an accused by the court based on public pressure and statements, and considering the prevailing climate."
Pandher maintained that he was wrongly accused, saying the CBI "did not file any chargesheet against me in the investigation of this case."
He questioned the events that led to his arrest: "Who is responsible then? Is the police responsible? Am I responsible? Is someone else responsible? Many people are responsible. If a proper investigation had been conducted, the truth would have come out."
He insisted that the probe was swayed from the very start: "If there had been no interference, no hype created, no frenzy, then the investigation would definitely have proceeded on the right path."
Asked if media pressure altered the course of events, Pandher said: "100 per cent. The questions I was asked were the same ones that appeared in the media papers every morning."
He said he was unaware of anything happening inside his own home. "Absolutely," he replied when asked if he knew nothing. "I have done nothing. I am also a victim, I too want justice. The game that has been played is not a small game."
He claimed he stayed at the Nithari residence only a few days a week. “I was usually away from home most of the time, sometimes for 10 to 15 days at a stretch,” he says.
According to him, the story of missing children near his house surfaced only after the case exploded in late 2006. "Where did you get the story that all the children disappeared in front of D5? When did it come? Tell me. It came after the case was opened."
Pandher alleged that children had been disappearing from a wider stretch of the neighbourhood, not just near his gate. "This area, from house number D1 to D6, and to some extent after crossing the Nithari culvert, is where most children are heard to disappear."
He also says a police picket was stationed outside his home months before the case blew up. "As I learned, they had set up a police picket outside the station later, when children were disappearing, a few months before our case was opened."
Pandher described his daily household environment as one staffed by several workers, not just Koli. "The cook was Koli. The cleaner was Maya. Another woman did the laundry. There was a gardener. I had a driver with me 24 hours a day."
On his relationship with Koli, he insisted there were no warning signs. "I found him to be a wonderful person. If he wasn't nice, I wouldn't have kept him," he says.
Pandher did not deny calling prostitutes to his house but rejected the image of wild parties.
"The escort story is true. And the party you're talking about is false. Only one party has ever taken place in this house, and I wasn't there."
Pandher rejected the idea that Koli was influenced or provoked by watching escort visits. "Only he can answer this question. What can I say about someone's mind?"
The early focus of the police was on one woman, Payal, who had been missing. Pandher admitted he concealed aspects of their relationship but said he cooperated with investigators.
"I was afraid at that time. I might get caught in a blackmailing scandal… But when the situation got out of hand, I told the police," he said.
He recalled being in custody when public outrage intensified. "I was the most surprised. There's no doubt about it. The public learned about all this happening in D5 before me."
Koli, too, has now been acquitted in the 13th and final case against him. Pandher said he cannot explain what happened inside the house during the period the disappearances occurred.
Nearly 17 years in prison have left him with a lingering question of his own: why the investigation unfolded the way it did: "The shortcomings that are visible today, the questions you are asking each other, first ask yourself: Was the interference in this case justified?"
As the courts have cleared both men, the central question remains unresolved. The families of Nithari continue to wait for answers. Pandher, meanwhile, says his life was destroyed by a case in which he maintained, "I did nothing."