Meri bhi icchha hoti thi, mere andar ka shaitan jag uthta tha (even I felt the urge, the demon in me used to wake up).”

This is what Surinder Koli, sentenced to death for one of the 18 Nithari serial killings, is quoted as having said under the influence of the truth serum at Gandhinagar’s Directorate of Forensic Sciences (DFS) laboratory while describing visits by “call girls” to the house near Noida “almost every night”.

The DFS put Koli and his employer Moninder Singh Pandher through psychological assessments, polygraph tests, narcoanalysis and brain electrical oscillation signature (BEOS) profiles. The DFS report on the tests, accessed by The Indian Express, says Koli had no mental or personality disorder, that all killings were rooted in fantasy and an “overpowering compulsion” to kill.

Pandher, the report says, may not have known about the killings in his own house. “My house is mine only on registry, it is more of Surinder's than mine... how could so much happen under my nose without my awareness,” Pandher is quoted as having said during the tests.

The report says Koli was convinced his employer was responsible for his sudden urge to kill, cut and eat — “maarna, kaatna, khana”.

The DFS tests profiled the duo as two “emotionally deprived and sexually deviated men, separated from their wives and family, living in a single house and trying to cope on their own in their different ways, without feeling concerned for, or bothered about each other.’’

... contd.