Allahabad:
Moninder Singh Pandher, one of the main accused in the Nithari serial murders, was acquitted by the Allahabad High Court in the Rimpa Haldar murder and rape case on Friday.
The court said there is no evidence that Pandher raped and murdered 14-year-old Rimpa in Noida's Nithari Village in 2005.
His accomplice Surinder Koli was, however, found guilty.
Delivering the verdict, justice Imtiaz Murtaza said: "There is no evidence on record against Moninder Pandher. The depraved and brutish acts of Surendra Koli call for only one sentence, and that is the death sentence. This judgement is only confined to the Rimpa Haldar murder and has no bearing on any other Nithari case."
The judgment was received with anger and grief in Rimpa's village.
"The CBI must have been bribed. We do not believe in this judgment," said Anil Haldar, Rimpa Haldar's father.
In 2005, Moninder Pandher and Surinder Koli were arrested in Nithari for what looked like India's biggest case of serial murders. Bodies of 19 victims were found, either buried or abandoned -- all of them raped then murdered.
The victims were from worker's hamlets, 16 of them women aged between five and 25 years. Two of them were boys and one other victim whose sex remained unidentified.
Based on available evidence the CBI chargesheeted Pandher in seven case and Kohli in 15. But the very next year it gave Pandher a clean chit. Reason: Evidence against him was not holding up.
At this point, the CBI Sessions Court hearing the cases, had intervened and said Pandher should remain a co-accused.
Later in 2007, it found Pandher and Koli guilty in five of the 19 cases. But evidence fell short yet again when one of the most crucial cases -- of Rimpa Haldar -- went to the High Court.
"The Sessions Judge allowed that application and thereafter adopted a procedure which was completely illegal," said amicus curiae G S Chaturvedi.
When asked about the judgement, G S Hajela, counsel for CBI in High Court, said: "There was absolutely no evidence against him in the case. That is why we had not charge sheeted him."
For now both Pandher and Koli will continue to remain in jail.
With the CBI's clean chit to Pandher in all the remaining cases as well this judgment of the High Court could even prompt him to apply for bail.
The Rimpa Haldar case was one of the most crucial of the Nithari cases because a lot of evidence that is being used in other cases draw from it.
As this case falls apart there is a question mark on whether the others will hold in High Court.