The convict in the Nithari killings Surinder Koli who had got a breather on September 8 when Supreme Court had stayed his hanging by a week, asked the Meerut jail officials on Thursday if death by hanging was ‘painful’. His query came hours after he met his mother Kunti Koli for the first time in eight years since he was lodged in jail for allegedly sexually abusing and killing children in Nithari village in Noida.
According to the S.H.M. Rizvi the Senior Superintendent of the Chaudhary Charan Singh district jail in Meerut, Koli on Thursday asked some of the jail officials if hanging was “painful”. Koli who awaits hangman’s noose, is spending anxious days in the high security cell of the jail these days.
“ I was told by some of the jail officials that Koli inquired one of them about execution and the process of being hanged. Normally he has been completely silent. But he today he asked people about the day of his hanging,” Mr. Rizvi told The Hindu .
“He asked how long is the process of being hanged. He also asked if death by hanging is painful,” added the senior superintendent.
Earlier in the day Koli had met his mother. Coming all the way from Mangrukhal village in Almora town in Uttarakhand the sixty eight-year-old Kunti Koli met her son for about fifty minutes. While talking to The Hindu after meeting her son, Ms. Kanti alleged her son was made a “scapegoat” because he comes from a poor family.
She referred to Koli’s employer and businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, who was also one of the accused in Nithari killings but was acquitted later and his death was overturned by the Allahabad High Court in 2009. He still faces trail in five of the 12 cases.
“My son is being sacrificed to save influential people. If Pandher was not given death penalty. If my son is hanged then Pandher should also be hanged,” she said.
Visibly emotional after meeting her son, the agitated mother asked: “What logic is this? Rich people like Pandher get saved from being hanged. Why poor people only have to bear the burden of justice”.
The apex court had in the early hours of Monday stayed Koli’s execution for a week until a fresh review petition challenging his death penalty was heard in an open court room by a Bench of three judges of the apex court.
Koli, who was found guilty of rapes and murder of several children between 2005 and 2006, was sentenced to death in four cases and his death sentence was confirmed by the apex court in 2011.
