Surendra Koli – the man convicted, and then cleared, of multiple counts of rape, murder, and destruction of evidence in the Noida Nithari serial killings case – died Friday morning, apparently by suicide. The body was found in a Haridwar tea stall.Local police have been circumspect so far, and have refused to comment beyond confirming the identity and stating the body was found hanging from the ceiling.Reports said Koli moved to Haridwar – his family is from Almora, roughly 300km away – a few months earlier. Why? That is unclear at this time, though it is likely Koli fled Noida to escape his past – its gruesome memories and the daily infamy.The Nithari serial killingsBetween 2005 and 2006 a killer stalked Nithari, a small urban village in Noida.Girls and young women kept vanishing – 19 of them – and their families were left chasing whispers and shadows in a quest just to be heard. But one by one they were turned away; the police shrugged, apparently either unwilling or unable to help.It wasn’t till May 2006 and the disappearance of Payal Sarkar that the horror story came to light. And it wasn’t till December of that year that the bodies were found.They were found – dismembered and decomposed, some of them worn down by time to skeletal remains – in the drains behind a bungalow in Noida’s Sector 31.Story continues below this adThe media reports read like a horror story. They were a horror story.From the overgrown drains behind and between that house and its neighbour, the police began pulling out skulls, bone fragments, torn dresses, and children’s toys.A school bag – dirty and torn and faded, roiled in mud – bore silent witness.Moninder Singh Pandher owned the house – D-5, Sector 31, Noida.Koli was his domestic help.The Indian Express visited the bungalow – abandoned then – in July 2025. It was a pristine white building, once. But when we saw it, there seemed to be rot in the air.Story continues below this adPandher and Koli were accused of raping and killing 19 girls, and then cutting up the bodies in a gruesome bid to hide each crime. They weren’t unknown in the area. That made it worse. The Express spoke to Jhabbu Lal – a dhobi whose daughter Jyoti, 10, was among the victims and who used to sometimes chat with Pandher.He recalled one instance Koli gave him one of Pandher’s shirts to iron, it was blood-stained. “He (Koli) said it was from ‘sahab’ slaughtering a chicken…”By Christmas of 2007 Pandher and Koli were arrested, and Koli ‘confessed’.He identified 10 of the girls from photographs the police showed to him..But that was just the beginning.Story continues below this adBack at Nithari, pressure growsAngry with the police for having dragged their feet for months – in which time more girls were raped and killed – there were violent clashes between residents and cops.The police were corrupt, the grief-stricken families raged.Six cops were sacked amid claims some had colluded with Pandher. But then, two years later, Sub-Inspector Simarjeet Kaur – then in charge of the police outpost in the village – got her job back. She spent time in jail for allegedly accepting a bribe.There were rumours also of human trafficking, that the girls were being abducted and killed for their organs. There was a doctor who lived near Pandher whom the police suspected in an unrelated illegal kidney transplant racket. Was he in on this?Pandher’s maid – Maya – was questioned too. Did she lure some of the girls?There were even rumours of cannibalism.The web of suspicion and unease spread relentlessly.Story continues below this adMuch was claimed but little was proven. The ‘strained’ relationship between Pandher and his family was a dead end. Old kidnapping cases in Chandigarh, his hometown, were dug out of storage and a link was sought. Then they were dropped.The mobile phone, the crackThe device that belonged to Payal undid the killer(s). It was tracked to a handcart puller, who told the police it ‘belonged’ to someone from the Pandher residence.Pandher was summoned. Then Koli was picked up. And the case broke. He led the cops to the drain behind D-5. They expected to find Payal. They found 18 others too.Koli claimed the depravity as his own. He declared he had abducted, raped, and killed the girls, and then dismembered the bodies in his quarters in the house.Story continues below this adIn early January the Central Bureau of Investigation took over the case, and more skeletal remains were found: this time a skull, a torso, and parts of a leg.The convictionsOn paper it seemed an open-and-shut case.Nineteen girls missing, a house of secrets and horror, and a confession. The verdict that opened the floodgates came in February 2009. Pandher and Koli were convicted of murdering 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar, and sentenced to death.In May 2010 Koli was found guilty of killing seven-year-old Arti Prasad. In September, he was found guilty of murdering nine-year-0ld Rachna Lal.The verdicts kept coming. The death sentences piled up. By the December 2012 verdict in the murder of Kavita, 5, he was to have been put to death five times.Story continues below this adIn February 2011 the Supreme Court agreed. In July the President of India – then Pranab Mukherjee – rejected a plea. In September a death warrant was issued.Koli was to be hanged on September 12, 2014.And then it fell apartQuestions over flawed investigation protocols and poor record-keeping counted against the police. A knife and axe ‘recovered’ from the Nithari house were dropped.By October 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli in all 12 cases against him, and Pandher in the two that he had faced. The state’s appeals against these acquittals were dismissed by the Supreme Court in July 2025, making them final.The top court called the earlier verdict a ‘manifest miscarriage of justice’.By then Koli had spent 19 years in custody.But then who killed the 19 girls?