NOIDA: Four days after his acquittal by the Allahabad high court in two Nithari murder cases in which he was awarded capital punishment, Moninder Singh Pandher (65) walked out of Luksar jail in Greater Noida on Friday.
Owner of D-5, the bungalow in Nithari near which skeletal remains of children and adults were found, eventually leading to 16 cases being filed against him and his domestic helper Surinder Koli, Pandher spent 14 years behind bars since his arrest in 2006. The rest were periods of bail.
Jail officials on Friday said they received copies of the Allahabad high court's October 16 ruling and released him at 1.40pm.
"On Thursday, we received the copy of the first order, and on Friday, we got the second copy, after which he was released," said Luksar jail superintendent Arun Pratap Singh.
Pandher, who was charged in six cases linked to the Nithari killings and convicted in three of those, was transferred from Dasna jail in Ghaziabad to Luksar this June due to crowding. He was lodged in a separate ward as he was suffering from tuberculosis.
On Friday, his son Karan and lawyers waited outside the prison complex to receive him when he came out, clad in kurta-pajama and a khaki jacket and carrying a jhola. He wore a face mask. He spoke to none, directly walking to a waiting car, which would take him and Karan back to their home in Chandigarh.
Pandher's lawyer Manisha Bhandari told TOI he was relieved about the HC's order. "It was a 17-year wait. Trial court judgments were influenced by the media trial and the Allahabad HC corrected this. There should be a balance in reporting about a case after any crime," she said.
Bhandari said Pandher was diagnosed with tuberculosis last year while he was in judicial custody and "needs proper medical treatment for his illness".
After bones and skeletal remains were found in a drain next to Pandher's bungalow, the CBI had filed 19 cases against Pandher and Koli. Of these, 16 went to trial. Pandher was awarded the death penalty in two cases in 2017 - one for the murder of a 20-year-old woman and another for rape and murder of a 25-year-old domestic helper. In his third conviction, he was given seven years in jail after being held guilty under the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act.
Koli was convicted and given capital punishment in 13 cases, but one of the penalties was commuted to life imprisonment.
The high court, which also acquitted Koli in the 12 cases in which he got the death sentence, had expressed its "disappointment" with the "botched up" investigation. The bench of justices Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Syed Aftab Husain Rizvi said the "prosecution failed to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt, on the settled parameters of a case based on circumstantial evidence".
Though Pandher was freed as he has already served his seven-year sentence, Koli will continue to serve his life term.
In Nithari, Jhabbu Lal, who lost his 10-year-old daughter, was dejected. "The trial court convicted them (Pandher and Koli) and the HC acquitted them. If they were not guilty, why were they arrested and put behind bars for so many years?" he asked.
Lal, who irons clothes for a living, said some local residents had extended help to challenge the acquittals in the Supreme Court. "I have no money to fight a legal battle. The residents' group told me they will fight the case and I will be needed to appear in court as and when required. We will fight if they help us," he said.