The Nithari massacre is one of the most disturbing criminal cases to emerge from Noida. In December 2006, the discovery of human remains near a bungalow in Nithari revealed the disappearance of several children and young women and triggered a nationwide investigation.
Almost two decades later, the case became the inspiration for Netflix Sector 36Starring Vikrant Massey and Deepak Dobriyal.
Directed by Aditya Nimbalkar and written by Bodhyan Roychowdhury, the 2024 crime thriller fictionalizes the events rather than presenting a straightforward retelling of the case. Netflix describes the film as “inspired by true events”.
The case has hit the headlines after Surinder Koli, one of the accused in the Nithari massacre, was found dead at his tea stall in Haridwar on September 18, 2026.
The police have declared the death apparently suicide. No suicide note has been found and investigations are on.
What happened in Nithari?
Nithari is a village in Sector 31 of Noida near Delhi. Between 2005 and 2006, several children and young women in the area went missing. To their families, the disappearances initially seemed like separate cases.
This horrifying truth came to light in December 2006 when human remains were found in the drains near the house of businessman Moninder Singh Pandher. The recovery of skulls, bones and other remains led investigators to connect the findings to missing persons cases. The case later involved several FIRs and a CBI investigation.
The investigation focused on Pandher, the owner of the house, and his domestic servant, Surinder Koli. Koli was convicted in several cases and later convicted in several trials, while Pandher was also tried.
Investigation and confession
The case attracted a lot of media attention as investigators tried to figure out what happened to the missing children and women.
Koli’s alleged confession became a key part of the prosecution’s case. Investigators also conducted forensic tests and searches around the bungalow and nearby drains.
However, the evidence used against the accused was later subjected to extensive judicial scrutiny. In 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli and Pandher in several cases, finding serious flaws in the prosecution’s evidence and investigation. In July 2025, the Supreme Court acquitted him.
The Supreme Court later dealt with Koli’s final pending conviction. In November 2025, it granted his curative petition and acquitted him in that case too, ordering his release if he was not wanted in another case.
What have the courts said about due diligence?
The Allahabad High Court had sharply criticized the manner of investigation.
As reported by The Hindu, the bench said, “The casual and frivolous manner in which the crucial aspects of arrest, recovery and confession have been handled is most disappointing, to say the least. The killings are nothing short of betrayal of public trust by the responsible agencies. It appears to us that the investigation has chosen the easy way out to take care of the poor servant. More serious is the possible involvement in the organized activity of organ trade.” Check the aspects.”
A 2025 Supreme Court proceeding also examined the evidentiary basis of Coli’s conviction. The court noted that the same confessions and recovery evidence were rejected in the accomplice cases and that a conviction in the remaining case would produce an indeterminate result.
The Supreme Court ultimately held that the identity of the original perpetrator had not been established to the required legal standards.
Who were the victims?
The intensive investigation involved several cases of missing children and young women. Human remains recovered from the area were examined by forensic teams, with investigators attempting to establish the identities of the victims.
According to reports at the time, most of the missing were children, while Payal, who was in her 20s, was among the adult victims. Remains recovered from the area included skulls and bones, while forensic investigations attempted to establish links between the remains and the families who had reported the people missing.
The scale of the discoveries, combined with the fact that many of the missing were young children, made the Nithari case a national story.
How Nithari inspired Sector 36?
Sector 36 Nithari takes the broad framework of the case and turns it into a fictional crime thriller. The film follows the disappearance of children from a settlement and the investigation leads a police officer to a serial killer.
Vikrant Massey plays Prem Singh, the film’s antagonist, while Deepak Dobriyal plays Inspector Ram Charan Pandey. Netflix’s official description states that the story follows a corrupt police officer who is forced to pursue a serial killer after several children go missing.
The fictional characters of the film bear resemblance to the people in the real case. Prem Singh is widely associated with Koli, while the character played by Akash Khurana resembles Pandher. However, the film changes names, situations and aspects of the story rather than retelling the case.
This distinction is important because Sector 36 Not a documentary. It uses Nithari murders as source material, building its narrative around crime, police investigation, power and social inequality. Netflix itself has described the film as “inspired by true events”.
Now where is the Nithari case?
After years of convictions and death sentences, the legal history of the case took a dramatic turn. The Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli and Pandher in several cases in October 2023. The Supreme Court acquitted him in July 2025.
In November 2025, the Supreme Court also acquitted Koli in the last remaining case against him, ending his legal proceedings related to the Nithari massacre.
Coley was later released from prison. On 18 September 2026, he was found dead inside a tea stall in Haridwar. Her body was found hanging and no suicide note was recovered, police said. An autopsy and investigation are underway, so the circumstances of his death remain under investigation by authorities.