Of Nithari and justice

It is not surprising that the first verdict in the gruesome Nithari killings — which involved at least 19 children who were brutally murdered in a house in Noida, near Delhi — evoked so much interest and such widespread notice. The story of abduction, murder, necrophilia, and cannibalism caused a wave of horror and revulsion across a nation, its conscience deeply scarred by the utter inhumanity of the crime. The eruption of joy and the enthusiastic, if reflexive, endorsement of the guilty verdicts handed out by the CBI special court against Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surinder Koli for rape and murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar is a reflection of the popular desire to see that justice is done in the Nithari case. But the judgment needs to be examined in a dispassionate manner, one that is detached from either passion, prejudice or presumption. That there existed a body of evidence to convict Koli of rape and murder is not in doubt. The court had access to his confessional statement under Section 164 of the CrPC as well as statements from witnesses that he routinely attempted to lure girls into the Noida house, from which the clothes Rimpa had last worn were recovered. The situation with respect to Pandher is substantially more complicated. The CBI had absolved him of Rimpa’s abduction, rape and murder but it was the court that put him down as an accused in the case. While the court is fully empowered to summon anyone as an accused on the strength of incriminating material, the manner in which it arrived at its conclusions raises serious questions. Pandher was abroad when the crime was committed and the basis for holding him guilty of the “criminal conspiracy” to rape and murder was his “hedonistic lifestyle” that “brought out worst criminal tendencies and sexual depravity of Koli.” To suggest that bringing “call girls home” and drinking “alcohol” created the environment for Koli to commit murder is to add a whole new dimension to the meaning of vicarious responsibility. It is nobody’s case that Pandher is totally innocent — as the court suggested, that he was totally unaware of so many murders committed between 2004 and 2006 in his house, and bodies disposed near it, does strain the imagination. But the law demands that guilt be established beyond reasonable doubt and not merely by circumstantial evidence of this nature. The rationale used by the court to convict and sentence him to death is bound to come in for sharp scrutiny when the case goes before the high court. Like all criminal cases, the ones relating to the Nithari killings must be decided upon objectively — uninfluenced by sentiment and with an eye on nothing but the law.

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