Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surendra Koli were on February 13 awarded death sentence for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. This is the first punishment in the gruesome murders of 19 children and young girls from Nithari village near Noida city in Uttar Pradesh. A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court ruled that the rape and murder of Rimpa Halder was the “rarest of rare” crime and deserved capital punishment. Of the 19 cases of abduction, rape and murder, the CBI has filed charge-sheets in 16 cases. All the cases are being heard separately. Koli, 38, has been charged with rape, abduction and murder in all the cases and Pandher, 55, is co-accused in six cases. It was behind the bungalow of Pandher in Noida that the body parts of the victims were found in December 2006.
“No more penalty could be awarded to the accused persons otherwise. They deserve more punishment as their act of murder and rape in this particular case was beyond all the canons of humanity,” the judge Rama Jain said while pronouncing pronounced the sentence. For Rimpa’s father Anil Haldar, an autorickshaw driver who has lived with the knowledge that his daughter was sexually abused and cannibalised, the ruling was some sort of vindication.