As ‘Sector 36’ streams on Netflix, here is the true story of the Nithari killings

The Vikrant Massey-starrer film is unofficially based on a series of murders in Noida that first came to light in 2006. Here is a recall of the case and what happened to those accused.

Vikrant Massey (right) plays the prime accused Surinder Koli who confessed to killing and eating women and children to the CBI. (File)

By: Explained Desk

4 min readNew DelhiSep 20, 2024 03:58 PM IST First published on: Sep 19, 2024 at 10:58 AM IST

Netflix film Sector 36, directed by Aditya Nimbalkar and starring Vikrant Massey and Deepak Dobriyal, has opened to lukewarm reviews and plentiful criticism for its portrayal of the infamous 2005-06 Nithari serial killings. Here is what actually happened.

Mysterious disappearances, unheard complaints

It was sometime in 2003 that residents of Nithari, an urban village in the middle of Noida, began reporting an unnaturally high number of disappearances of women and children in the area. In many cases, the Noida police simply refused to file complaints. And even in cases where they did, investigators did not make any headway into the matter.

In May 2006, a distraught father went to the police about his missing daughter, claiming that she had visited the home of a certain Moninder Singh Pandher in the nearby Sector-31, Noida on the day of her disappearance. No FIR was lodged until June, when the father made a scene at the official residence of a senior police officer.

Moninder Singh Pandher coming out of a CBI court in Noida. (Express file photo by Gajendra Yadav) 24.07.2017.

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Upon tracing the missing woman’s phone, the police were led to Surinder Koli, who worked as a domestic help in Pandher’s house at the time. Koli was arrested but soon released on bail.

Discovery of human remains, a shocking confession

Then, in December 2006, plastic bags stuffed with human skeletal remains were found dumped in a drain behind Pandher’s house, D-5. Along with the remains were some belongings of the missing victims. This led the police to arrest Koli and Pandher on December 29 for abducting and killing multiple women and children.

Pictures of Nithari victims during a condolence meeting in Lucknow. (Express photo by Vishal Srivastav)

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With the case now grabbing national headlines, and Noida police’s previous inaction and ineptitude under the spotlight, the probe was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on January 10, 2007. The CBI’s forensics team carried out further searches of Pandher’s house and uncovered more skeletal remains and evidence of heinous crimes.

On March 1, the CBI recorded Koli’s confession in presence of a magistrate. The house help admitted to the killings “in great detail” and said that he lured the victims inside D-5, strangled them, and then “chop up and eat up their body parts after cooking them”.

Noida police had filed 19 FIRs against Pandher and Koli relating to crimes against 19 different girls, and the CBI filed charge sheets in 16 of them. In a chargesheet filed in 2007 in one of the cases, the CBI alleged that Koli had “necrophiliac” and “cannibalistic” tendencies.

Lengthy court cases, eventual acquittal in all but one case

Both Koli and Pandher were convicted and sentenced to death by a special CBI court on February 13, 2009 for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old. After appeal to the Allahabad High Court, Pandher was acquitted but Koli’s conviction and death sentence was affirmed.

Koli then approached the SC, which dismissed his appeal in 2011, and then dismissed a review petition in 2014. But in January 2015, Koli’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Allahabad HC, citing “inordinate delay in the disposal of the mercy petition”. Koli remains in prison due to this conviction.

In 2017, a CBI special court awarded the death sentence to Pandher and Koli for the rape and murder of the woman whose father’s complaints had first led the police to the duo. On October 16, 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli in 12 cases and Pandher in two cases citing ‘unsatisfactory’ evidence, procedural loopholes, improbable possibilities, alleged tutoring and torture. Pandher walked out of prison on October 20, while Koli continues to serve a life term.