Pandher at the Ghaziabad court (AFP), (below) Rimpa Haldar

Ghaziabad, Feb. 12: Moninder Singh Pandher and Surender Koli were today found guilty in the first of the 19 Nithari rape and murder cases, leaving the CBI with egg on its face but giving hope to the victims’ families.

The CBI had given the Noida businessman a clean chit in the killings of children and young women that shocked the country two years ago, holding his servant Koli alone responsible for the 16 murders for which chargesheets have been filed so far.

A special CBI court today found Koli guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 376 (rape), 120 and 201 of the Indian Penal Code in the rape and murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar. Pandher was convicted on the same charges along with Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy). This section clarifies that while the businessman did not commit the murders himself, he knew they were being committed in his house.

Pandher broke down when the verdict came. Koli showed no emotion.

The sentence will be announced tomorrow. The maximum punishment could be death.

“I hope both are hanged to death so that they can’t treat any child like this any more. My faith in the judiciary has been restored, although I feel the CBI has betrayed us,” said Dolly Haldar, Rimpa’s mother.

The Haldars’ lawyer, Khalid Khan, revealed today that he was threatened and offered a bribe to dilute the case.

Anil and Dolly Halder. (Prem Singh)

Dolly and her husband Anil had entered the court at 11am, teary-eyed as they braced themselves to face the men who had brutalised and killed their daughter.

According to the CBI chargesheet, Rimpa was raped and murdered about four years ago by Koli at Pandher’s bungalow in Noida’s Sector 31, not far from Nithari where the Haldars lived.

Rimpa was allegedly strangled and then cut to pieces by Koli with two kitchen knives and an axe. The chargesheet also said Koli suffered from necrophilia (urge to have sex with a corpse) and necrophagia (urge to eat the flesh of a body). Pandher was given a clean chit on the ground that he was not in the country.

“I saw my little girl being born. I fed her and saw her grow up. I cannot believe she is dead. I am to blame,” Dolly said.

Rimpa’s mother added: “It’s because of my illness that we got her to Delhi to help out. She was studying in Chakda, an hour and a half from Calcutta. She was happy there. I am happy my little girl has got justice.”

Till minutes before the verdict, the CBI had stuck to its stand that there was no evidence against Pandher. “Our case was that Koli had lured Rimpa Haldar inside the bungalow on February 8, 2005, raped and killed her…. Pandher, who was in Australia then, was not a party to the crime,” CBI counsel J.P. Sharma told the court.

Last August, the court had on its own summoned Pandher, and he too repeated the line that he was in Australia when Rimpa went missing.

But the Haldars’ lawyer charged the CBI with fabricating documents and shielding Pandher. “It’s a landmark judgment and I am happy I was part of it. Both of them will either get life sentence or death. We will pursue the death sentence,” Khan, 39, said.

The lawyer said he received threats and bribe offers. “Throughout the trial, I was repeatedly intimidated by some lawyers. Some lawyers… tried to threaten me with dire consequences,” Khan told PTI. “I was offered money, people tried to spread rumours against me. Two cases were also filed against me. People came to my home with money bags.”

Pandher and Koli were arrested in December 2006 after body parts of 19 children and young women were found packed in 57 plastic bags buried in the backyard or dumped in the drains around the Noida house, which was later labelled “House of Horrors”. The murders were thought to have been committed between February 2005 and November 2006.

The verdict has brought the hope of justice to families of the 18 other victims.

“I hope by the time this ends, we can be proud to have fought this battle,” said Vandana Sarkar who lost her 20-year-old daughter Pinki.

Sunita, the mother of 10-year-old Jyoti, said: “I want them tortured and killed in the same way my daughter was killed.”