Who Was Surinder Koli? Nithari Killing Accused Dies By Suicide In His Tea Shop In Haridwar

· Free Press Journal

Nithari case accused Surendra Koli died by suicide at his tea shop in the Bhupatwala area of Haridwar on Friday. Police reached the spot, took his body into custody and launched an investigation.

Who was Surinder Koli?

Surinder Koli, the domestic help at the centre of the infamous Nithari serial killings case, spent nearly two decades in prison after being accused and convicted in a series of murders that shocked the country.

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The case came to light in December 2006 when skeletal remains, including those of children, were recovered from an open drain and an area near D-5, the house of businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, in Nithari village, Noida. Several women and children had reportedly gone missing from the area in the preceding months.

Koli, who worked as Pandher's domestic help, was arrested during the investigation. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) subsequently took over the probe. A series of separate cases were registered, with Koli eventually facing 13 prosecutions linked to the killings.

Trial courts convicted Koli in multiple cases and sentenced him to death. His conviction in the murder of 15-year-old Rimpa Haldar was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011, although his death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in 2015.

However, the prosecution's case began to unravel. In October 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli in 12 cases, holding that the evidence, including his alleged confession and recoveries of human remains, was legally unreliable. The Supreme Court upheld those acquittals in July 2025.

Surinder Koli, Main Accused In 2006 Nithari Serial Killings Case, Dies By Suicide In His Haridwar Tea Shop

Koli's final conviction remained in the Rimpa Haldar case. In November 2025, the Supreme Court, exercising its curative jurisdiction, set aside its earlier conviction and acquitted him in the last pending case. The court held that allowing the conviction to stand when the same evidence had been rejected in the other cases would result in a miscarriage of justice.

The Supreme Court ordered his immediate release if he was not wanted in any other case, bringing Koli's long legal battle in the Nithari killings to an end.

About Nithari Case:

In December 2006, skeletal remains of eight children were first found in a drain behind businessman Moninder Singh Pandher’s house in Nithari. Further searches in the area uncovered additional remains, bringing the total number of bodies linked to the case to 19. The victims were mostly poor children and young women who had gone missing from the surrounding locality. The gruesome discovery triggered nationwide outrage and led to the arrest of Pandher and his domestic help, Surinder Koli. The CBI later took over the investigation and registered cases involving 19 alleged victims.

The investigation also faced questions over a possible organ-trade angle. A high-level committee of the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development had flagged the possibility and recommended that it be investigated. The Allahabad High Court, while acquitting Koli in 12 cases in 2023, criticised investigators for failing to properly examine the possible involvement of organised organ trafficking. The court noted that a doctor living in a neighbouring house had reportedly been a suspect in an earlier kidney-transplant scam, but investigators did not adequately pursue that lead. However, the courts did not establish that the Nithari victims were actually killed for organ trafficking.

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