The Nithari killings remain one of India’s most harrowing episodes. In the Rimpa Haldar case, Surendra Koli was sentenced to death by the trial court, a verdict affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2011. Koli’s review petition was dismissed in 2014. But in 2015, the Allahabad High Court commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Notably, in 12 companion cases built on the same confession and recoveries, the HC acquitted Koli in 2023. The Supreme Court upheld those acquittals on July 30. Same evidence; opposite outcomes.

On November 14, a curative bench led by Justice Vikram Nath, while entertaining the petition, observed: “Two sets of outcomes resting on the same evidentiary foundation cannot lawfully coexist.” It held that such discord “imperils the integrity of adjudication”. Intervention, the bench ruled, was a constitutional duty, not discretion.