The Supreme Court on Monday permitted an open court hearing on the curative petition filed by Surendra Koli, the prime accused in the infamous Nithari killings, challenging his sole conviction order from 2011.
Koli, who was acquitted in 12 separate cases of rape and murder of minor girls between 2005 and 2007, continues to serve a life sentence based on one remaining conviction. His fresh plea seeks to overturn that conviction, which has kept him in prison despite being cleared in all other cases.
The petition was filed on August 30, a month after the apex court declared him innocent in 12 cases related to the Nithari episode, citing lack of evidence and serious procedural lapses in the investigation.
Advocate Payoshi Roy, representing Koli, told the bench led by Chief Justice of India Bhushan R. Gavai and Justice Vinod K. Chandran that her client’s liberty was at stake since he remained incarcerated due to the one surviving conviction. “His review petition was dismissed earlier. A curative petition is now filed,” she submitted.
The bench noted that the judges who had delivered the 2011 conviction order had since retired. “We will assign a bench,” the CJI said, allowing the plea to be listed in open court.
A curative petition is the last judicial remedy available to a convict. Normally heard in chambers, such petitions are entertained only in cases where a litigant shows that they were not heard, there was apprehension of bias, or there was an abuse of process of law.
Koli’s review petition had earlier been dismissed after an open court hearing in 2014, when the top court upheld his conviction and death penalty. In 2015, however, the Allahabad High Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment on the ground of delay in deciding his mercy plea.
The Nithari killings shocked the nation in 2007 after skeletal remains of several children were recovered from a drain near the residence of Koli’s employer, Moninder Singh Pandher, in Noida’s Nithari village.
Investigators alleged that Koli lured young girls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them, with accusations even extending to cannibalism. Trial courts convicted Koli in 13 cases and Pandher in two. Pandher, however, was later acquitted in all cases.
