New Delhi - An Indian businessman and his servant were convicted Thursday in the first of several cases related to the rape and murder of 19 people, most of them children, in a Delhi suburb in 2006, news reports said. A special Central Bureau of Investigation court convicted businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and Surendra Koli for raping and killing 14-year-old Rimpa Haldar, the PTI and IANS news agencies reported.
The two men were arrested in December 2006 after skeletal remains and body parts of several children were found in a drain behind Pandher's home in Noida, a Delhi suburb.
The remains included 15 skulls.
Police investigations revealed the remains belonged to four women and 15 girls who had been raped, mutilated and killed.
Most of the girls belonged to poor families living in a slumnear Pandher's house.
Pandher and Koli have been charged with murder, rape and abduction in 19 cases.
Thursday's verdict came after a two-year trial. The judge was expected to pronounce the sentences Friday.
The charges against both men are punishable by death.
