Naman Shrestha
Helmed by Aditya Nimbalkar, Netflix’s ‘Sector 36’ is an Indian crime thriller movie that revolves around the mysterious disappearance of several children from a slum in Noida Sector 36. With a serial killer in the middle of it all, a corrupt yet determined police officer is pulled into the deadly investigation of the missing children. The two go head-to-head against each other as the cop tries to unravel the dark secrets of the killer. Although it is a fictional story, the film is loosely inspired by the real-life case of the 2006 Noida serial killings, infamously known as the Nithari Killings. One of the two perpetrators involved in the actual case was Moninder Singh Pandher, a well-to-do married Punjabi businessman.
Moninder Singh Pandher Was Accused of Burying the Bodies of Children and Women on the Back Side of His Property
In late 2006, a couple of Nithari village residents, whose daughters were among the numerous missing children, claimed that they had gotten to know about the location of the bodies of the children who disappeared in the past couple of years. More residents came forward with the claims of discovering a decomposed hand in a drain. When they got the police involved and told them that they suspected Surinder Koli, who was under the alias Satish at the time, of being involved in murder, the suspect soon confessed to sexually assaulting and murdering six children and a 20-year-old woman named Payal.
In connection with the disappearance and possible murder of Payal, the police arrested Surinder and his employer, Moninder Singh Pandher, in late December 2006. The former’s chilling confession led the police to the property of the businessman and the surrounding areas, where they started digging and found the buried bodies of several children. Despite Surinder taking the blame upon himself for the deaths, it wasn’t enough to get Moninder, who was declared a depressed womanizer, out of the police’s radar. In January 2007, the case was transferred to the CBI who delved deeper into the case and discovered more human remains at the same site and the nearby drains.
The Former Businessman Received Multiple Convictions For Different Murders
More than two years after the children killings of 2005 and 2006 came to the surface, Moninder and his employee, Surinder, were found guilty of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl named Rimpa Haldar, among many others. On February 13, 2009, they received the death penalty for their crimes. After receiving death sentences, the two convicts filed a mercy petition, which was denied by the then President of India, the late Pranab Mukherjee. Besides the rape and murder charges, Moninder was also accused of pornography and cannibalism.
On October 12, 2006, a 25-year-old domestic help worker was one of the many children and young women who went missing from Nithari Village. Her clothes were found amongst the human remains that were found after digging up the area behind Moninder’s property. Thus, the two convicts were convicted for her rape and murder as well, which resulted in them receiving yet another death sentence in a CBI special court in Ghaziabad, India, in 2017. In July of the same year, Moninder and Surinder were also convicted of raping and killing 20-year-old Pinki Sarkar. In his third conviction in 2022, Moninder received seven years of imprisonment after he was proven guilty of immoral trafficking under the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act.
Moninder Was Acquitted of His Crimes in 2023
After spending more than 15 years in prison, on October 16, 2023, Moninder Singh Pandher was acquitted of all the charges against him following the success of his appeal in court. Due to a lack of incriminating evidence other than the confessions of his house help, Surinder Koli, Moninder’s convictions were turned over by the Allahabad High Court and he was released from prison just four days after his acquittal. On October 20, 2023, he walked out of the Luksar Jail in Greater Noida and was taken to his Chandigarh residence by his son, Karan, right after. Since the former businessman was diagnosed with tuberculosis in the previous year, he was supposedly provided with the required medical treatment.
Read More: Surinder Koli: What Happened to the Suspected Serial Killer?
