New Delhi – Authorities said Thursday that they have filed the first charges in the serial killings of 19 people in a posh New Delhi suburb, a case that outraged India after relatives of the impoverished victims said police ignored their complaints as dozens vanished over two years.
Surender Koli, the servant of a wealthy businessman, had been charged with raping and strangling a 25-year-old prostitute as well as destruction of evidence, said Arun Kumar, a joint director of the federal Central Bureau of Investigation.
Koli’s boss, Moninder Singh Pandher, was charged with running a prostitution racket from the house, pressuring witnesses and bribing police officials not to investigate.
The dismembered remains of the prostitute were among those of 19 people, most of them children, found in a storm drain next to Pandher’s house.
Up to 38 people disappeared during a two-year period, and nearly all the victims were from poor families working as servants in the area.
Authorities also said they arrested a policewoman, Simranjit Kaur, who is alleged to have taken bribes from Pandher to shield him and Koli from the investigation, and the CBI was brought in to take over the case.
Kaur was among the six officers fired in the initial weeks of the investigation for mishandling the case.
Officials say Koli this month confessed to killing and sexually assaulting 16 of the 19 women and children whose remains have been found. There was no word Thursday whether he would be charged in the other killings.
If convicted, Koli could face the death penalty.
Koli did not mention Pandher in his confession.
News of the killings emerged in late December, and police quickly took credit for the arrests. But residents said police had routinely ignored reports of missing people and had been forced to start investigating when human remains were spotted in the drain and the smell became overpowering.
