Nithari killings: Pandher serious after mob fury

GHAZIABAD/NEW DELHI: Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, accused of sexually assaulting and murdering more than 20 children from Nithari village, was in a critical condition on Thursday after a mob comprising mostly lawyers attacked him and his domestic aide in a Ghaziabad court, giving a dramatic twist to a crime saga that has stunned India. 

A crowd of some 300 slogan-shouting lawyers clad in their black robes and local people broke into the chamber of Special Magistrate Sapna Mishra as she left the room and pounced on Moninder Singh and started punching and beating him up, taking the Uttar Pradesh policemen and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials completely by surprise.

All along, the mob shouted slogans like "Maro salo ko!" (Beat the rascals!) and "Adamkoro ko hamare hawale karo!" (Hand over the cannibals to us!).

Outnumbered and shocked, the police and CBI personnel struggled with the attackers, trying to push them back and simultaneously dragging down both Moninder Singh and his accomplice Surendra Koli down the stairs from the first floor. But the mob relentlessly pursued them and kept hitting the two.

Fisticuffs erupted between some of the policemen and the attackers, whose strength swelled in no time, as the officials desperately tried to protect the accused from being lynched. Moninder Singh, witnesses said, suffered the bulk of the frenzied fury since he was more recognisable.

Within minutes, Moninder Singh, who is touching 60 and was not in the pink of health even when he was arrested Dec 29, collapsed on the ground.

One policeman immediately lay down over him to save him from further beating. Koli, too, got attacked but somehow managed to save himself from most of the blows.

In the process, the attackers and those trying to save the accused fell over several motorcycles at a parking lot. And the crowd also hit policemen trying to save the duo.

"The whole thing lasted well over 15 minutes," said Neelu Ranjan, a television journalist who witnessed most of the violent and completely unexpected drama. "People pulled Moninder Singh's hair. It was madness."

And as the thrashing continued, hundreds of people watched the scene from the windows of the court complex, many clearly enjoying the street justice being meted out to the two alleged killers.

It took a while for the CBI and Uttar Pradesh Police to push back the attackers and take the Moninder Singh, who had lost consciousness, and Koli into a judicial lock up from where they were rushed to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in the heart of New Delhi.

Surprisingly, none of the policemen fired in the air although many of them were armed with guns and automatics.

Doctors said Moninder Singh was in critical condition, his blood pressure having plummeted.

"We are trying to see if he has suffered any internal haemorrhage. He will undergo a MRI scan." The younger Koli was said to be stable and out of danger.

Moninder Singh and Koli have been accused of luring scores of children of poor families into the former's bungalow in Noida, near Nithari village, and sexually assaulting and killing them.

They then allegedly dumped the remains in the clogged drains around the house. Investigators took days to recover decaying bones and clothing from the drains, plunging the entire country into sorrow and disbelief.

Within an hour of the incident, the officer in charge of Kavi Nagar police station, whose men were to guard the two accused, was suspended for dereliction of duty.

An angry district judge summoned magistrate Mishra and local officials to find out how and what happened.

The incident triggered a renewed war of words between Uttar Pradesh's ruling Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress on the other.

The latter said the beating of Moninder Singh and Surendra Koli in a court was a clear example of the deteriorating law and order in the country's most populous state.

Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh in turn accused the Congress and BJP of trying to topple the government of Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The CBI also chipped in, saying it had intimated the Uttar Pradesh Police a day earlier that the two accused would be produced in the court. "But apparently they had not made proper arrangements."

Just before the trouble began, magistrate Mishra had ordered that both Moninder Singh and Koli should be kept in CBI custody until Feb 8.