While the neighbourhood has thrashed out every theory, from the possibility of an organ trade racket to a sex angle, the police have waved the confession of Pandher’s cook Surender and claim that at the end of a weeklong hunt for the truth, they have emerged with a “watertight case” against the two men.

Besides the confession, the police are banking on the pornographic material, web cam and laptop they seized from Pandher’s house. The most incriminating piece of evidence, probably, is negatives of Pandher posing in the nude with young girls.

That said, after literally stumbling upon the skeletons, three frantic days of digging and managing hysterical crowds and writing down confessions and the self-congratulatory “we’ve cracked the case”, legally, the Noida police is still looking for clues to nail Pandher.

Missing links

* Besides the organ trade theory, police are looking at Pandher’s visits abroad in October and are exploring the possibility that he was selling pornographic material overseas. No one is fully convinced, though.

* Six policemen have been dismissed but there is no explanation on why the case of the missing children was not investigated for nearly two years. At least 31 children have gone missing from Nithari, adjoining Sector 31, in the past two years. In 2006, the police confirm that eight children went missing, even printing a poster with photographs of 10 children.

* The police haven’t come clean on why they didn’t investigate Pandher even after picking him up for questioning in the summer of 2006. Nor have they been able to trace missing parts of the torso or directly link Pandher to the death of the children.

So far, all they have is Pandher’s confession that he did ask Surender to get Payal killed. And they have Surender’s confession that he killed Payal, a 26-year-old resident of Sector 19 in Noida who had gone missing in May, and some of

the children.

Square One

“Everything is not adding up,” says Nand Lal, the man who forced the police to investigate his daughter Payal’s disappearance that eventually led them to the serial killings. “Hiding” in a temple, he participates in a discussion between the priests.

Following a heated debate on the status of the case, many are convinced that “they will get away because the police didn’t do anything for too long”.

Noida SSP RK Singh Rathore, however, defends his men: “The absence of a breakthrough in tracing the missing children of Nithari cannot lead to the conclusion that the police were not putting in adequate effort into the investigation.”

“But I will fight for them, all the children,” resolves Lal, whose call for justice set the wheels rolling in November for the missing children of Nithari, two years after some of them disappeared from the neighbourhood.

It was Lal’s application in court that forced the police to register the case of his daughter Payal’s disappearance on October 7 and begin investigations afresh. Nearly two years after they had first brushed aside the helplessness of the migrant families of Nithari, the police turned their scanner on the goings-on in Noida’s Sector 31.

Evidence of investigation

Forensic experts have already voiced concern on contamination of evidence. Not only did the police stomp all over the evidence, they even allowed mediapersons access to the scene of crime.

During interrogation, Surender confessed that he had kidnapped some of the children. Slowly, it emerged that Surendra allegedly lured the children with chocolates and sweets into the house and then sexually assaulted them. After strangulating them, the 30-year-old from Almora reportedly put their bodies in sacks and dumped them in the drain. With Surender’s statement leading them to the remnants of the crime, the police say they have enough circumstantial evidence to get his conviction.

Meanwhile, the hunt is still on for incriminating proof to link Pandher to the crime. Teams have panned out across the region, investigating Pandher’s other offices and residences in Haldwani, Dehradun, Haridwar, Baghpat, Chandigarh and Mohali.

The Noida police has a lot riding on the narco-analysis tests that the two men are undergoing in Ahmedabad.

The CBI has been called in and the investigations could take a new, much-awaited turn. With new facts emerging everyday, the “watertight case” is far from closed.