11 September,2009 12:12 PM IST | | PTI
The Allahabad High Court today acquitted businessman Moninder Singh Pandher in one of the Nithari serial killing case, setting aside the death sentence awarded to him by a lower court, but upheld the capital punishment handed down to his domestic help Surinder Koli.
The order was passed by a Division Bench comprising Justice Imtiyaz Murtaza and Justice K N Pandey which observed that "no evidence has been placed on record to show that Pandher was guilty". Pandher and Koli were awarded death sentence by a special court in Ghaziabad on February 13 this year for the murder of 14-year-old girl Rimpa Halder at his house in Noida.
Significantly, CBI, which was investigating the Nithari episode, had given a "clean chit" to Pandher, a Noida-based businessman, in its chargesheet. Pandher's son Karandeep Singh, who was present in the High Court, expressed delight over the acquittal of his father and said he was now looking forward to "justice in the remaining cases related to this matter".
"There is God, and there is justice in the country," Karandeep said. The High Court, he said, had sustained CBI's chargesheet and "we are quite happy about that". Pandher's lawyer Monisha Bhandari said that she will try for bail for her client in view of the verdict.
