 | | Our 2005 cover | There are crimes which send a shudder down your spine and remind you of the evil which surrounds us. The Nithari killings is one such crime. In recent times, no other criminal act has so shocked the nation by its monstrous depravity and the identity of the accused, a highly successful businessman educated in elite institutions and his Man Friday who lured innocent little victims into their house of horror in a Delhi suburb. Although the police have been tight-lipped there are many bizarre stories floating around from cannibalism to necrophilia to organ harvesting. And if that were not enough, a political angle has been introduced with the Uttar Pradesh elections round the corner. The Mulayam Singh government is on the defensive as the Opposition is projecting it as a crime-infested state. Undoubtedly, the police behaved in their usual callous manner by ignoring the complaints of missing children for close to two years. Crime in India is often obscured in the blur of statistics. The National Crime Bureau records that 4,500 children go missing every year in India. NGOs put the figure much higher-around a million annually. That may seem abnormally high but looking at the number of children on the streets of every city; beggars, vendors, pavement dwellers or those working in tea stalls and restaurants, it is certainly closer to the actual figure. The tragedy, as exposed in the gruesome serial killings of children from Nithari village, is that a majority are from poor families, hence more vulnerable to exploitation and enjoy little leverage with the police. None of the 17 children from Nithari who have been identified so far would have thought they were spending their last living moments when they entered the gates of D-5 in plush Sector 31. That is perhaps the most fascinating and macabre aspect of this case, the classic Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde syndrome. By day, a normal, even jovial man with a taste for the good life, by night, a psychopath devoured by sexual fantasies, and the bloodlust of his servant, the man who did the actual killings. Our cover story examines the psychology of the psychopath, what could possibly turn a seemingly normal human being into a cold-blooded pervert, by talking to psychologists. We spoke to people who knew Moninder Pandher to analyse the impact his failed marriage had on his psyche. We also examined how the police ignored over 20 cases of missing children right under their noses. Finally, we looked at how much evidence the investigators had collected and whether it was sufficient to make a cast-iron case against the accused, especially Pandher, a man with political connections and plenty of money. In all the media frenzy we must not forget he is still only an accused and deserves a fair trial. Hopefully, this will not become another political football and the police have learned their lesson from the Jessica Lal case and will do an honest job. Index
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