* 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.

... contd.