Justice denied, justice delivered: Nithari accused Koli’s long walk to freedom

FOR TWO decades, Surender Koli was a branded man. The main accused in the Nithari serial killings of 2006, he was the “cannibal” who allegedly lured children to his employer’s house in Noida, murdered them, and “ate their flesh” – his actions cited as evidence of human depravity at its worst.

And then, at 7.30 pm on November 13 this year, Surender Koli walked out of Kasna Jail in Greater Noida , clad in a blue shirt, black trousers, and a navy-blue jacket.

On November 11, the Supreme Court acquitted Koli in the last of 13 cases against him, calling the investigation “botched” and a “manifest miscarriage of justice”. The verdict was the culmination of a decades-long legal battle that Koli’s defence team fought, against considerable odds.

This is the story of how Koli finally walked f