Greater Noida, Nov. 13 -- Surendra Koli walked out of Luksar Jail in Greater Noida on Wednesday evening, 18 years after his arrest in connection with the grisly 2006 Nithari killings - and a day after the Supreme Court acquitted him in the last of the 13 cases pending against him. Koli, dressed in a powder-blue shirt, black pants, and a navy-blue jacket, stepped out at 7.16 pm, bringing to a close a nearly two-decade-long saga that had once horrified the country. The 49-year-old former domestic help was accompanied by four of his lawyers. No family members were present. He did not speak to the reporters gathered outside, and his lawyers declined to say where he would be taken. Koli was 30 when he was arrested on December 29, 2006, after skeletal remains, skulls, and bones were discovered stuffed in plastic bags in the backyard and drain of his employer Moninder Singh Pandher's bungalow in Noida's Sector 31. The killings, involving at least 19 children and young women, were among the most chilling crimes to emerge from the National Capital Region. "He was calm when informed about his release and did not show much emotion," said Luksar jail superintendent Brijesh Kumar. Officials said Koli, who had been moved to Luksar from Ghaziabad's Dasna Jail in 2024, maintained a quiet routine and "spoke to everyone normally but kept to himself". Investigators had accused Koli and Pandher of abducting, sexually assaulting, and killing the victims - children aged between five and 14 and women up to 25 - before disposing of their remains. Allegations of cannibalism amplified the public outrage that followed the discovery of the remains in December 2006. Koli and Pandher were sentenced to death in multiple cases, the last in 2017. But soon, the cases began to come undone. Beginning October 2023, the Allahabad High Court, and later the Supreme Court, began overturning those convictions, citing serious flaws in the investigation, fabricated confessions. "The casual and perfunctory manner in which important aspects of arrest, recovery and confession have been dealt with are most disheartening, to say the least," the high court had observed last year....