No, this is not about terrorists. It's about a diminutive woman called Dolly, the wife of a rickshaw puller. Here she is, with a raised arm, aiming to throw a piece of brick at the police station, with a policeman in the background, half-smiling, and in a posture that reveals what he is probably thinking: mad woman, does she think she can take on the police force single-handedly?This made front page news in a local newspaper, but I doubt if it even made it anywhere else. I turned to every news channel that are broadcast from studios in either Delhi or Bombay. Nothing. Not even BBC International News or website at any had any comments on the incident: it was 9/11, this year, anniversary of one of the biggest terrorist attacks in history, one that started a few wars, and one that has led to so much action and introspection, so many protests and regime changes, so many candle-light vigils and political rhetoric. But there's very few protests we hear of about the plight of people like Dolly, a mother who has lost her 10-year old child Rimpa about four years ago, not caught up in some spectacular mass murder, victims of which are usually remembered by thousands all over the world, the cause of their murder condemned and often the murders brought to justice on immense public demand and outcry, but in the house no. 5D in Nithari, the slaughterhouse of south Delhi, India's very own heart of darkness in this times of rapid progress and modernisation... the horror, the horror.
Like Rimpa, 19 other young girls ranging from ten to twenty two years old, many from far away Bengal villages, whose parents had migrated to the capital city in search of a better livelihood but usually ended up in abysmal living conditions of the slums and still tried their best to raise their children, working as labourers in one form of back-breaking manual labour or other on the streets, or in people's homes as domestic servants, earning a pittance to run their families and yet hoping to educate their children so they grow up to be self-sufficient citizens living a better life than their largely impoverished existence so far.
In Nithari, in the house of horrors, Pandher, a businessman, and his servant, Surender Kohli partied at nights, abducting these girls whom they subjected to unspeakable horror of abuse and killed everyone of them. To get rid of their bodies, they cold bloodedly cut them into smaller pieces and buried the remains in and around the sewers behind the house. This went on for about two years or more. The people of the slums nearby had all along complained of about fourty children and young people, mostly girls disapperaing during this same period. The police abused these poor people when they went to file complaints about their missing children. Most of them could not even manage to lodge their complaints hounded by the police's inexplicable but all too familiar behaviour towards any person who does not seem to be from a "good" family (read powerful or rich with connections). We know it is a fact that on many a night, many a police personnel, among them surely some high ranking officers enjoyed Pandher's hospitality for the evening. It is also rumoured that Pandher had political connections and I am inclined to believe it fully because who does not know what our breed of successful businessmen are like?
Initially the police and CBI were in denial about Pandher's complicity and it seemed they tried to pin the blame only on the psychopathic servant, the gruesome agent of horror who also seems to have confessed to necromancy and cannibalism. However, during the investigation there was enough evidence found in the house that pointed to a child pornography and even organ trade racket.
Earlier in February this year, both Pandher and Kohli were awarded the death sentences as is the practice for the "rarest of the rare cases" by a court in Ghaziabad, much to the embarrassment of the Criminal Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's highest organ of fighting domestic crime as many CBI officers, just as their colleagues in the police department often made statements that gave a "clean chit" to Pandher. This businessman in his fifties educated at what would be considered as elite schools and colleges, at least my the likes of Rimpa's parents, was supposedly in Australia at the time of Rimpa's murder, a fact that has not been made public so far we can see. There had been no investigation to uphold Pandher's alibi: no one from Australia has been reported to have seen Pandher during the same period. If there is indeed any such alibi in existence, the public at large has had no access to it so far.
Today his son, who claims his father was an ideal parent, is feeling greatly relieved. The reason? A higher court has acquitted Pandher, much to the dismay of the parents of the missing children, all of them like Dolly are from a strata of society who rely on day to day manual labour to make a living. Poor parents, mere labourers who might at best earn a hundred dollars a month, even they have spent the last few years paying lakhs and lakhs of rupees (one lakh = one hundred thousand, or about a one thousand dollars) in hopes of getting some justice for their brutally murdered children. Prosecution lawyers agree that this has set a precedent for the other 18 pending cases against Pandher and Kohli, and it might mean that Pandher is likely to get away with it all in those cases too owing to this major judgement.
This is another 9/11. It's horror beyond belief that continues beyond the initial relevation. Not only the basest form of criminal activity has come to light in this nation's capital, the political will is that of denial, and of shielding the rich and powerful. It is a well known fact how politicians can influence the judiciary besides the corrupt elements of the judiciary itself. No doubt that they have let time to pass so the public forgets about the horrific case, and they were awaiting the day when those poor people will also give up, or be driven away merely because they have no more money, or no more will to keep fighting through a costly and expensive legal system. These are the same people whom the police harassed when they approached the police many times before the murders were out. At first the authorities refused to take any complaints, then later, when the murders were exposed by a citizen's welfare committee, they tried to take the credit of discovering the bodies.
I wonder if the courts took cognizance of the fact that many people of the neighbourhood often saw police personnel and other guests visiting Pandher's house late at night, the coming and goings of call girls, and above all, the unmistakable foul stench emanating from the hydrants in the rear of the property? It is just impossible to believe it was all the handiwork of an illiterate village manservant dubbed as a "psychopath" by the investigation;did he also know how to use webcams and laptop computers to record pornography? Where did he acquire such skillful techniques of surgically removing organs and dismembering bodies of the victims, putting them in plastic bags and dumping them in shallow holes around the sewers? Is it possible that without the house owner's full support and approval, he abducted young children and call girls and finished them off, ripped open them to extract their organs, make pornographic films and even indulged in necromantic acts and cannibalism for so long?
And what about Pandher himself who seems to have often travelled abroad to Australia, what business did he have that took him there? What kind of business man was he anyway? Why did Pandher's family never live with him, the ideal parent his son claims that he is? And why are the police and CBI protecting this man, and why has a higher court acquitted him even after all evidence brought to court has already once succeeded convincingly to uphold his complicity? Is the true reason the existence of are many more actors in this gruesome tale, actors who are placed high in the police and political establishment? How else could anyone so openly allow such an activity to take place right in the middle of a densely populated city? There's no doubt that the truth is perhaps much more horrible than what has been revealed so far. Perhaps they are letting off Pandher fearing that if he is convicted and awarded death penalty, he might reveal the names of many more people with nothing else to lose any more. Names which might shake up the current establishment to its very roots. To my mind, I can find no other explanation as to why anyone can do what he and his servant did right in the middle of the city with almost full impunity until citizens took the law in their own hands to force a search without warrant.
This nightmarish incident has brought to light the tragedy of a country that has been hijacked not only by corruption and greed, but a society which is infected with a kind of indifference that will allow almost any act of violence and suppression without being shocking to its people who keep accepting the day to day dehumanisation and lack of ethical behaviour as the reality, the way of the world. Terror as we know it is sometimes far more horrible than hijacked planes and tragic collapse of buildings brought about by dramatic acts of violence perpetrated by some remote fanatic cult. The terror we live in is all around us, in minds and hearts of some very ordinary people, people who otherwise are known as civilised and respectable, educated in the best of the country's institutions, role models for the young and just another gentleman from a good neighbourhood.
Read more
Latest story about Pandher's acquittal (incident on 9/11):
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090912/jsp/frontpage/story_11484856.jsp
http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/11/hc-sets-pandher-free-in-nithari-case.htm
2006 serial murder investigation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Noida_serial_murder_investigation
