She escaped Noida killers' clutches

RELIEF AND GRIEF: Mamta did not to give in to Surendra's lures but her sister succumbed to it.

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Nithari (UP): Sixteen-year-old Mamta isn’t quite sure of what she feels. It's a mélange of relief, grief and horror.

Mamta narrowly escaped the Nithari serial killers' clutches when she refused to take the bait offered by the accused Moninder Singh Pandher's domestic help Surendra.

However, her sister and a friend paid with their lives for giving in to Surendra’s advances and lures.

Mamta and her sister Manju, both domestic helps, were on their way to work early in November, when Surendra first approached them.

He promised more pay if the sisters agreed to work at Pandher's house and told them that the businessman was a good person.

“He used to say sister why don't you work for us? He used to speak very sweetly, but I always felt something wasn't quiet all right, we refused,” says Mamta.

Mamta remembers whenever Surendra approached them, Pandher always stayed at a safe distance, waiting and watching, almost as if he himself chose the girls who needed to be approached.

Mamta's statement also makes amply clear the modus operandi of the two paedophiles.

Surendra and Pandher picked their victims with care from Nithari - a Gujjar village with a large migrant population.

Only the children of migrant labourers - usually the ones who had no ration card, voter identification, no real identity and no political voice - were picked up.

Therefore, there was no one the villagers could turn to for help when their children began to go missing.

Today, in Mamta's one-room house, her mother prays for her dead daughter's soul.

But a sense of anger is palpable and revenge is on everyone’s mind. “Hand him over to us we'll butcher him,” says Mamta’s mother.

Revenge or no revenge, for the children of Nithari something is amiss, a brother gone away, a friend who hasn’t come to play for days or a dead sister.

The questions are many and the answers, too few. Nithari is still struggling to come to terms with its shocking present and isn’t sure of its future either.

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