The Supreme Court has set aside Surendra Koli’s final remaining conviction in the Nithari killings case, ruling that sustaining it when all related cases based on the same evidence were found unsustainable would violate Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India BR Gavai held that the evidentiary foundation underpinning Koli’s conviction had already been deemed inadmissible in companion cases. Maintaining a contrary result on the same factual and evidentiary matrix, the Court said, would amount to “arbitrary disparity” offending both equality and fairness principles.

“Article 21 mandates a fair, just and reasonable procedure — a demand that becomes most stringent where capital punishment is involved. Permitting a conviction to survive on evidence subsequently rejected as involuntary or inadmissible in identical circumstances undermines Article 21. It also infringes Article 14, which guarantees equality before law. Arbitrary inconsistency in outcomes on the same record cannot be tolerated. The curative jurisdiction exists precisely to correct such anomalies,” the Court observed.

Although the Allahabad High Court had commuted Koli’s death sentence to life imprisonment in 2015, the Supreme Court noted that the conviction continued to carry severe consequences. It found the confession forming the basis of the conviction legally defective, while the alleged recoveries failed to satisfy statutory conditions for admissibility. With those elements excluded, the circumstantial chain of proof, the Court said, completely collapsed.

Meeting the “high threshold” for curative relief, the Court held that the flaws in the conviction “undermined the integrity of the adjudicatory process,” justifying intervention ex debito justitiae — as a matter of right and justice.

While acknowledging the heinous nature of the Nithari crimes and the immeasurable suffering of the victims’ families, the Court reaffirmed that “criminal law cannot rest on conjecture or suspicion. However grave the offence, proof beyond reasonable doubt is indispensable. Expediency can never override legality.”

The bench underscored that the presumption of innocence endures until guilt is proven through admissible and credible evidence. When such proof fails, “the only lawful consequence is to set aside the conviction, no matter how horrific the allegations.”

Case No.: Diary No. 49297-2025
Case Title: Surendra Koli v. State of Uttar Pradesh