Indian federal investigators lay out charges against alleged serial killers

INDIA: Indian investigators have charged a servant with allegedly raping and killing a prostitute, and the man’s boss with using his house as a brothel and bribing police officers, authorities said.

The charges were the first in the serial killings of 19 people in a posh New Delhi suburb, a case that prompted widespread outrage in India after relatives of the victims said police ignored their complaints that up to 38 people had gone missing over two years. Nearly all victims were from poor families working as servants in the area.

India’s federal Central Bureau of Investigation was quickly called in to take over the case, and on Thursday the agency said Surender Koli had been charged with raping and strangling a 25-year-old prostitute, Payal, who used only one name, said Arun Kumar, a joint director of the CBI. Koli was also charged with destruction of evidence.

Payal’s dismembered body parts were among the remains of 19 people, most of them children, found in a storm drain next to a house owned by Moninder Singh Pandher, Koli’s employer.

Officials say Koli earlier this month confessed to killing and sexually assaulting 16 of the women and children. 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 his employer in his confession, authorities have said.

But on Thursday, Pandher, who allegedly procured the prostitute and others for himself and his friends, was charged with running a prostitution racket, pressuring witnesses and bribing police officials not to investigate his servant.

Hours earlier, police said they had arrested policewoman Simranjit Kau, who allegedly took bribes from Pandher and “framed incorrect records with intent to save accused Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surender Koli from legal proceedings and punishment in the case.”

She was among the six officers fired in the initial weeks of the investigation for mishandling the case. News of the killings emerged in late December, and police quickly took credit for nabbing the suspects.

But residents of the area said the police had routinely ignored reports of missing people and had been forced to start investigating when human remains were spotted in the drains and the smell became overpowering.

NEW DELHI, Friday, AP