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The new Netflix film Sector 36 dramatises the infamous Nithari serial murders of 2006, when over a dozen people were believed to have been killed by a man named Surinder Koli, who used to work as a house help at the Noida bungalow of a businessman named Moninder Singh Pandher. In the film, which transports the story from Noida to New Delhi, Vikrant Massey plays the killer, while Deepak Dobriyal plays the cop tasked with bringing him to justice. In a 16-minute scene, the killer confesses to his gruesome crimes, which share a stark resemblance to what transpired in Noida almost two decades ago. Ex DSP of the UP Police, Gajendra Singh, spoke to Aaj Tak recently about the infamous case.
Singh was also a part of the three-member interrogation team that got a confession out of Koli. In the interview, he recalled how impervious Koli was during the interrogation, regardless of the amount of pressure that was put on him. He cracked only when he came face to face with a rickshaw puller who had key evidence tying him to the alleged crimes. This is when Koli opened up about killing a girl named Payal, and then shared details of the other murders that he was accused of having committed.
Recalling his interactions with Koli, the police officer said in Hindi, “The entire force in Noida didn’t even have time to eat… There were seven of us in the task force, three of us in the interrogation team, and our job was to make sure that no harm falls on Koli and Pandher, because crowds had gathered outside the bungalow. We had to protect them and interrogate them. He didn’t say anything for a couple of days, but when we brought the rickshaw driver in front of him, that’s when he opened up about Payal. He confessed to killing her.”
The police recovered skeletons in the empty patch of land behind the bungalow, as well as the presumed belongings of the missing people. Singh continued, “Then the interrogation started again, and he began to list down everything that he had done… He had a poker face. Nothing would draw any emotion out of him. He wouldn’t laugh, he wouldn’t cry. We even used the third degree on him, but even then, his expression wouldn’t change even in the slightest. We couldn’t read his face at all. It was only after the rickshaw driver came that he broke down and gave details about each of the 16 murders that he had committed.”
The police were so terrified about their own safety, they refused to transport Koli and Pandher via train, as had already been planned. Two new cars were arranged for their transfer, but one of them met with an accident at 3 am, just as the convoy was about to leave. The next day, it was arranged for the teams to transport them via air, for which special permissions from the DGCA had to be procured to allow the police to carry firearms. During the flight, Singh remarked to a colleague about the view outside, and was told, “A (rakshasa) monster is sitting next to you, pray that we land safely.”
In 2023, Koli and Pandher were both acquitted by the Allahabad High Court on lack of evidence. The court reprimanded the investigators of ‘brazenly’ violating the ‘basic norms of collecting evidence’. Pandher walked free, but Koli is still serving a life sentence in connection with one of the murders.
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