Noida: Kids' bodies cut by 'expert'

Noida, Uttar Pradesh: The children found murdered in Nithari village in Noida were murdered by someone who cut their bodies like an “expert”.

An autopsy report on the 17 skeletal remains — 11 of girls/women and six of boys — found near bungalow D-5 said there was a "pattern" in the way the dead were "dissected". It did not rule out an organ trade racket behind the murders, as the torsos were missing in all bodies.

"The bones were cut very carefully and systematically," said Vinod Kumar, Chief Medical Superintendent of Noida’s Government Civil Hospital, which is identifying the bodies.

The autopsy report also says, "The suspicion of human organ trade cannot be ruled out as the entire trunk area — the chest and abdomen part — except for a few bones in some cases, is missing in all the skeletal remains found, whether it was kidney, liver or intestines which was surprising."

The report says the oldest murders took place three years ago and the latest three months ago — a period during which nearly all the organs could not have “disintegrated” completely. Most of the children were strangled.

"The manner in which the victims were killed reveals that those behind the murder has some kind of expertise in this. All the victims have been killed by being slashed at the same point between the two vertebrae," PTI quoted a senior doctor at the hospital as saying.

Hoever, the autopsy report is a preliminary investigation and its conclusions will have to be substantiated by police evidence, forensic findings and DNA tests.

Police on December 31 had asked the hospital to carry out the post mortem.

Meanwhile, Senior Superintendent of Police R K S Rathore said police would investigate the organ trade angle if the autopsy did not rule it out.

"We will talk to the doctors who carried out the post mortem and will certainly look into the matter seriously," Rathore told reporters.

Moninder Singh Pandher and Surendra Kohli, who allegedly dumped the children in a drain near the bungalow after raping and murdering them, have been taken to Ahmedabad for narco-analysis tests at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Gandhinagar.