Surendra Koli, who was acquitted last year by the Supreme Court of the 2006 Nithari serial killings, was found dead in Haridwar Friday. He was found hanging near a tea stall that he had been running for months in the holy town, the police said.

No suicide note was found. “We recovered the body of a man from the Saprishi area. The police have identified him as Surender Kohli. It appears that he died by suicide. The forensic team has arrived and is examining the body,” said police officer Shishupal Singh Negi.

“The body was found hanging. This is all that we have been able to ascertain so far,” said the policeman.

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2006 Nithari killings

The Nithari killings came to the spotlight in 2005, when several women and children were reported missing in Nithari village in Noida near Delhi. In December 2006, the remains of children and women were discovered in a drain behind the house of Moninder Singh Pandher, where Surendra Koli worked as a domestic help.

Both Koli and Pandher were arrested on December 29, 2006.

From the Archives | The true story of the Nithari killings

Over the next few days, as the police investigated the killings and discovered more remains, the Pandher home came to be known as a “house of horrors”. In January 2007, the case was transferred to the CBI, which filed charges in 16 cases.

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In 2009, the trial court convicted both Koli and Pandher of rape and murder and sentenced them to death. The court relied primarily on Koli’s confession before a magistrate.

Later that year, the Allahabad High Court upheld Koli’s conviction and death sentence but acquitted Moninder Pandher, citing lack of substantive evidence against him.

Koli appealed his conviction, but in 2011, the Supreme Court dismissed his plea, calling him a “serial killer” and describing the case as “rarest of rare”.

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He was tried and convicted in 12 other Nithari cases between 2010 and 2021 and sentenced to death. All were based on the same evidence — his 2007 confession and the recoveries made in 2006. Pandher was also convicted and sentenced to death in two of them.

But in October 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli in all 12 cases and Pandher in the two remaining against him. The court cited “lack of evidence” and a flawed investigation. in November 2025, the Supreme Court upheld the acquittal, rejecting the state’s challenge, and ordered his release.

Koli, a resident of Almora, moved to Haridwar in Uttarakhand after his release, and ran a tea stall opposite what is locally popular as the Lal Mata temple. The police have informed his family members.