SHAME

 

 

“To satisfy my carnal desires, I need callgirls. Payal, alias Deepika, was also one of them. She spent some nights with me and that was precisely the reason why she was blackmailing me. It was then that I conspired with my servant, Surinder to kill her. After Surinder murdered her, the body was disposed off. The day I did not get a girl, I could not sleep. And then I used to ask Surinder to get somebody. Surinder would then lure the children and get them inside the house. For the last one and a half year, I have sexually abused a lot of children and I do feel sorry for that. As planned, I used to get these children killed so that nobody would get to know of the deeds” ...

Excerpts of Moninder Singh Pandher’s confession from the Police case diary (case no-838/06, dated 29.12.2006. Page no. 34367, Police Station-sector-20 Noida)

“My master often got Payal, alias Deepika, to sleep with. One day my master, Moninder Singh Pandher told me that Deepika was blackmailing him and that I must kill her. Pandher told me that he would bear all the expenses for getting the job done and then he left for Chandigarh on May 5. Next day from a local telephone booth, I made a call to Deepika’s mobile (9891115404) and asked her to meet a new client… While she was sitting on a sofa, watching television, I came from behind and throttled her…My master used to get girls almost everyday. The day, he did not get any, he would ask me to arrange for them. Maidservants, washerwomen, children, whosoever I saw in front of the gate, I lured them inside. First Pandher would use the girls and then pass them on to me. After having sex, I used to kill them. I would behead the bodies and dump the torsos behind the house and in the drains”…

Surinder Koli’s confession from the Police case diary of Payal murder case (no: 838/06, dated 29-12-2006, page no: 34364, police station-Sector-20, Noida) Knock..knock . . . there was a constant tapping on the door. It was around midnight. The tapping woke up 35-year-old Shamshad Begum. “Who is it?” the woman asked. There was no response, but the knocking continued. Slowly she approached the door and mustered enough courage to open it. There was no one. She stared into the darkness. A cold shiver ran down her spine.

Shamshad Begum is the mother of the class III student of Delhi Public school, Mehnaaz, a prime witness to the serial killing in the Nithari house of Moninder Singh Pandher.

The family along with Mehnaaz was expected to appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation, to depose on how attempts were made by Pandher’s servant, Surinder Koli and maidservant Maya to abduct the little girl. It was sheer providence, which saved the girl from being buried somewhere in that house of horror. Earlier in the day, the phone had kept ringing relentlessly. Everytime, the family members picked up, the connection went dead. After the night episode, sometime in the afternoon, two men in police uniform came to the house to inform them the time and date to appear before the CBI. And again, after midnight, two more policemen came to inform about the same. That’s not the end of it. The day Mehnaaz was expected to depose, five men in blue uniform, who claimed to have been sent by the CBI came to pick up the girl. The suspicious mother called up a television channel in front of the waiting men. On hearing her conversation, the men in blue suddenly turned around and walked out. Never to be seen again. “When we asked the CBI, we were told that they did not send anybody to our place,” says Shamshad.. Who had sent them? Shamshad tries answering the question. “Can a servant have the means to use people to scare the witnesses? It’s clear, this was Pandher’s doing,” the mother asserts. Saying that the CBI merely completed the so called “formality of interrogation,” she alleges that the agency “did not even bother to listen to their entire story.” Shamshad went on: “The CBI officials spoke to us for merely 10 minutes.” And what the CBI said after this, continues to rattle the family, even today. “The child could also be wrong,” was the CBI officials’ reported remark to the family after they wound up the interrogation. For the time being, police protection has been provided to Mehnaaz’s family.

The statements of Pandher and Koli, as given in the beginning of the story, were recorded by the then deputy superintendent of police and in-charge of the investigation, Dinesh Yadav. During the confession, along with the Station House Officer, V.P.Singh, nearly a dozen police officers were present. The statements recorded by the police make it clear that both Pandher and his servant Surinder Koli were equally responsible for the gruesome killings. Similar confessions were recorded at Sector 20, Police Station, Noida on December 30, last year (serial no: 8, dated 30.12.2006). Records of their confession, which are in possession of The Sunday Indian, reveal that Pandher had indulged in sex with almost all those, who were slaughtered at his Nithari residence. Once through with them, the master reportedly left the victims at the mercy of his maniasc servant. Koli’s job was to kill them and dispose off the corpses. Now let’s take a hard look at the role of the country’s premier investigative agency - the Central Bureau of Investigation, which took charge of the case, after the police reportedly messed up the investigation. Here is how the CBI went ahead with the case and in the process did virtually everything to give Pandher, the transporter, who earned nearly Rs 30 lakhs a month, a clean chit. While filing the chargesheet of four cases relating to the murder of Payal and others, the CBI did not mention the confessions of Pandher and Kohli. Nor did they record the statements of the police officials present during the interrogation of the alleged killers and those present during the recovery of the body parts, skulls and skeletons of the victims. In fact, if the CBI had taken cognizance of these confessional statements, Pandher could have been charged for murder and conspiracy. The loopholes in the CBI’s charge-sheet appear to be glaring. In the charge-sheet filed in the Payal murder case, the CBI, while mentioning Koli’s confession (paragraph no: XIX) before the police, chose to ignore Pandher’s statement.

Pandher, in whose house the dance of death continued for over a year, could possibly go unscathed. Of the six charge-sheets filed by the CBI, none of them connect Pandher to the murders. In five of the chargesheets, Pandher has been given a clean chit. In the Payal murder case, Pandher has merely been accused of criminal conspiracy, immoral trafficking, bribing and intimidating the victim’s relatives. As a result, people, particularly the relatives of those slain are losing faith in CBI. “if neighbours could smell the stench, how come pandher was unaware?”

TSI speaks to Khalid Khan, who has challenged the CBI’s line of investigation

Khalid Khan has filed a petition in the CBI Special Court, for re-investigation into the murders of Payal alias Deepika, Rimpa Haldar and Pinky Sarkar. He has filed for re-investigation, since the CBI is all set to give Pandher a clean chit. The court has already ruled in favour of the petitioner in connection with Rimpa’s murder.

Speaking to the TSI, Khan says: “ The CBI’s arguments to get Pandher off the hook are baseless. Documents provided by Pandher merely show that he had always been out of station during the killings. There is no independent source to substantiate Pandher’s claims. No document can be treated as a clinching evidence, till it is substantiated by other evidences including witnesses.

Moreover, nearly 19 murders had taken place at Pandher’s residence. In all probability, Pandher was aware of everything that was going on at his place. If the neighbours could get the smell of decomposed bodies, how could Pandher be unaware of the stink ?

Kohli has been charged for murders mainly for being a nacrophilic. In that case, why did Koli not commit any murders or similar crimes before being employed by Pandher? Without testing whether the blood and sperm samples found on the beds and sofas matched Pandher’s, the CBI has reached the conclusion that Koli was the main killer. This is a major lacuna in the entire investigation. There is plenty circumstantial evidence against Pandher to connect him to the Nithari killings. Unanswered Questions

Why was an additional boundary wall constructed before the main boundary wall? The skeletons and body parts were recovered from between these two boundary walls.

TSI found that on the first floor of the house a window had been constructed at the back of the house. The particular construction does not go with the original design of the house, and it seems that it had been built for certain purpose. Was the window being used to throw down the bags containing body parts?

Surinder lived with his family in the house he worked before being employed by Pandher. Why did he start living with Pandher all alone?

Why did Pandher pay the sweepers for not cleaning the drains sur rounding his house ?

If Pandher was innocent, why had he been applying for anticipatory bail in connection with the Payal alias Deepika’s case ?

If Pandher was innocent, why has he been bribing the police ? The bribe amount known so far is nearly Rs 1.7 lakhs.

A security guard was supposed to be guarding Pandher’s residence. Where has the guard gone? Has he, or the security agency he was Whired from, questioned by the CBI ? Nobody knows.

Often, Pandher was seen to look into the drains with a torch at night. Why did he do so? What was he looking for?

How could Pandher’s maidservant Maya afford such a lavish lifestyle ? Where is she?

If neighbours caught whiff of rotten smell from Pandher’s house, how come he was oblivious to it?

Why did Pandher not step out of the house during daytime? In Koli’s absence, he would not even fully open the doors if the washer man came to deliver clothes.

Often VIP cars were found parked outside Pandher’s residence. Who were these VIPs ?

Why was Pandher so much attatched to Koli ? Why was he spending so much money and arranging fake documents to get Koli off the police agnet ?

Pandher organised documents to prove that Koli was in Chandigarh, the day Payal was murdered. Why? It took some time for the TSI to track down Nandalal, father of Payal, who had left Delhi after being tortured by police. Nandalal became a police target when he tried to file a missing complaint of his daughter. Nandalal, who now lives in village Pipaliya at Uttarakhand screams: “CBI Pandher ko Bacha rahi hain. Mujhe CBI par bharosa nahin. Main haar nahin manunga. Main Supreme Court jaunga (CBI is trying to save Pandher. I have no faith in CBI. I will go to the Supreme Court).”

Anil Haldar, a rickshaw puller, whose daughter, Rimpa was sexually abused and killed at Pandher’s residence is not sitting quiet either. He has filed a petition in CBI’s special court, demanding a re-investigation into Rimpa’s murder. His target: Monider Singh Pandher. In another case, the special court in Ghaziabad has ordered re-investigation into Pandher’s involvement in the murder of Pinky Sarkar, one of the Nithari victims. With the court swinging into action, it seems clear that along with the relatives, even the judiciary is not exactly satisfied with CBI’s modus-operandi.

When contacted, former CBI chief, Joginder Singh observed: “There is something wrong somewhere. I do agree.” Singh then added: “May be there is really something wrong somewhere. But then one needs clinching evidence to prove certain things.”

Eyebrows are also being raised, the way the leading investigating agency has been tackling the witnesses or ignoring the crucial ones. If Nandalal and Anil Haldar are to be believed, CBI has not yet recorded their statements properly. “CBI never asked a single question about Pandher. Rather they kept enquiring about me. Where was I born, where do I live, who is my father etc. It seems as if I am the accused, not Pandher,” Nandalal complains.

Haldar says that “the CBI has distorted my statements. They have not mentioned what I actually said. When I called up the CBI to complain about the way my statement was being recorded, the officials disconnected the phone.” When asked, which CBI official did he speak to, Haldar claimed that he had taken down the phone number of the sleuth, who spoke to him. “Naam to pata nahin. Lekin main us se milkar jan na chahata hun ke Pandher kaise bacch gaya (I don’t known his name, but I want to meet him and ask, how come Pandher was given a clean chit),” Haldar seethed. The poor, illiterate and angry rickshaw puller may be unaware of the ways of the CBI world, but he still cannot fathom how the owner of the house, from where his daughter’s skeleton was recovered was being branded “innocent.” And Haldar is not the only one. Ashok Kumar’s five year-old son, Max has been the victim of the man eaters of Nithari. Spewing fire, he says: “No servant can go on a killing spree where he is working. It cannot be done without the knowledge of his employer.” This is one question which the entire nation seems to be asking now.

For the past two years, social worker Usha had been working relentlessly to track down the missing children of Nithari. She is the one who highlighted the issue in the media. Mehnaaz, incidentally, is the find of Usha Thakur, while Rajesh Sisodia is the one who recovered 26 bags of human skeletons from the backyard of Pandher’s residence. Disappointed the way the CBI was going ahead with its investigation, Usha is now demanding a judicial probe into the matter. “Earlier police was trying to save Pandher and now CBI is doing the same. We need an independent probe by a retired Supreme Court judge into the ghastly killings,” Thakur told the TSI.

Another crucial player into this macabre drama was Pandher’s maidservant Maya. Her lifestyle and standard of living had raised many eyebrows. She often flaunted her two cellphones. Usha Thakur says: “Maya is a crucial link, who is aware of the secrets of Pandher. She knows everything that went on inside the house. But CBI did not even bother to record her statement. Instead she has been sent away to an unknown destination.” Similarly no one knows the whereabouts of the rickshawpuller Amar Haldar, who used to drop Payal to Pandher’s house. “Since the day I showed his house to the police, Haldar has been missing,” Nandalal revealed to the TSI.

If the poor relatives of the Nithari victims feel that their cries for justice were being suppressed under the weight of Pandher, the lover of fine spirits ranging from Goldschlager, Drambuie, Bardinet, Curacao Blue and Gold Napoleon, their feeling might not be misplaced. For Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Mattoo, the middleclass had come out on the streets. Candles were lit, rallies were taken out, seeking justice for them. It’s time to realise that justice cannot always be for the highest bidder. It’s also time to prevent the maneaters roaming freely on the streets. As for the CBI, the less said the better.