Court issues Nithari killer's death warrant

A special court has ordered that Surender Koli, sentenced to death in sensational Nithari serial killings case, be hanged  between May 24 and May 31 following which he has filed a mercy petition before the President.

Central Bureau of Investigation Judge Shyam Lal issued the death warrant for execution of 39-year-old Koli, after the Supreme Court in February confirmed the death penalty awarded to him in the case related to rape and murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar, CBI advocate Jai Prakash Sharma said on Monday.

In the May 3 order, the judge said that Koli should be hanged between May 24 and May 31 at 4 am.

Following the issuance of the warrant, Koli moved a mercy petition before the President of India on May 7, the court was informed o0n Monday, following which the judge fixed May 13 for further order in the matter, according to Sharma.

Koli was sentenced to death along with his employer Moninder Singh Pandher, by the Ghaziabad court on February 13, 2009. It was the first of the Nithari killings cases to be decided.

The Allahabad High Court had confirmed Koli's death sentence on September 11, 2009 while acquitting Pandher of the charges. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in February saying the case was "horrifying" and "barbaric" and "no mercy can be shown to him".    

A bench of justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra had said, "Koli has not retracted his confessional statement" and the circumstances in which the crime was committed was "premeditated" falling in the "rarest of rare category".

"In the statement, he (Koli) described how he allured the girls and then strangulated them. He also confessed that he used to have sex with dead bodies and would eat parts of human body after cooking them," the bench had said in the order.

A total of 16 cases were registered against Koli after Nithari serial killings came to light in December 2006, following discovery of human remains from a drain behind Pandher's house in Noida in the outskirts of Delhi.

Haldar, who went missing from her home in the neighbourhood of Pandher's residence in early 2005, was one of victims of serial rape-cum-killing episode that sent shockwaves across the country.

Koli was sentenced to death in four other cases. Both Koli and Pandher are currently lodged in the high-security Dasna Jail.