Nithari 'Skeleton' Case Accused Found Hanging, Was Acquitted Last Year
Surendra Koli, cleared in 2025 after years on death row, was found dead at his Haridwar tea stall, police said.
By Pranjal Gupta
New Delhi, September 18: Surendra Koli - sentenced to death, kept alive for years only by a bureaucratic delay, and finally cleared of every charge against him in 2025 - was found dead at his tea stall in Haridwar on Friday. Police say it appears to be a suicide; the post-mortem will confirm the cause.
Koli's case had one of the strangest arcs in Indian criminal justice. In 2006, skeletal remains, skulls, and bones were discovered near a Noida bungalow belonging to businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, where Koli worked as domestic help. The remains belonged to children and women who had gone missing from the neighbourhood over the previous two years. The discovery triggered nationwide outrage, and the CBI opened 16 to 19 separate cases against Koli, alleging kidnapping, rape, murder, and dismemberment.
By 2009, a CBI court had sentenced both Koli and Pandher to death in one of those cases. Pandher was acquitted the same year and walked free. Koli was not - his death sentence stood even as the case against his own employer collapsed. It was later commuted to life imprisonment.
The final reversal came only last year. In 2025, the Supreme Court set aside Koli's one remaining conviction, ruling that upholding it would be a "manifest miscarriage of justice" - the evidence it rested on had already been discarded as unreliable in 12 companion cases. In effect, the court found that Koli had been kept in the death-row-to-life pipeline for over a decade on evidence the system itself no longer trusted. The ruling cleared him in every case.
Koli had since moved to Haridwar and was running a tea stall on rent near Sapt Sarovar road, according to police.
"Police received information this morning that a person had allegedly hanged himself. Our forensic team reached the spot. At present, it appears to be a case of suicide. The body is in police custody, and the panchanama and post-mortem proceedings are underway," said Shishupal Singh Negi, circle officer, city.
Sub-Inspector Vikram Bisht of Haridwar Kotwali police station told PTI the Saptarishi police outpost received the information Friday morning; the deceased was identified as Koli, a resident of Mangrukhal in Almora.
