Indian court acquits businessman of girl's rape, murder

New Delhi - The high court in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh Friday overturned the death sentence of a businessman accused of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher is also linked to a series of horrifying murders of 18 young women and children between 2005 and 2006, and is formally accused of involvement in six of them. The Allahabad High Court acquitted Pandher of the rape and murder of Rimpa Haldar at Nithari village on the outskirts of New Delhi. However it upheld the guilty verdict passed in February against his male servant, Surinder Koli, IANS news agency reported. Haldar's body parts were found, along with those of 18 other young women and children, in bags in a drain behind Pander's house in Nithari in the Noida area of Uttar Pradesh in 2006. Local residents accused police of negligence, saying the children had been missing for some time. They said police had not acted because the children came from poor families. The two men were arrested in early 2007 and charged with murder, rape and abduction. They have been in custody since. A special Central Bureau of Investigation trial court had handed down death sentences to Pandher and Koli in February. Pandher's lawyers then appealed the verdict at the Allahabad High Court. The prosecution had claimed Pandher was not present in the house when the murders took place. The high court ruled there was no evidence to link Pandher to Haldar's murder. Haldar's family said they would appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court. After the acquittal was announced, the girl's mother, Dolly Haldar, and other family members stood outside Pandher's bungalow in Noida shouting slogans against the police and the CBI, IANS reported. Haldar's killing was the first of 19 cases of abduction, rape and murder of four young women and 15 children, mostly girls, that the CBI investigated in the Nithari killings. The CBI filed charges in 16 cases, all of which are being heard separately. Koli has been charged with rape, abduction and murder in all 16 cases, while Pandher is accused of involvement in six of them.