Indian servant to hang for 'House of Horrors' murder

NEW DELHI: India's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a domestic servant to be hanged for raping and killing a teenage girl in a serial murder case involving at least 19 dead children that shocked the country.

Two judges backed the death sentence handed out by lower courts to Surinder Koli for murdering Rimpa Halder, 14, in 2005 at a bungalow on the outskirts of New Delhi that became known as the "house of horrors".

Koli, 39, has been found guilty of three murders and faces 16 other cases of murder that he allegedly committed in his employer's house between 2004 and 2007. Most victims were girls from a nearby village.

Koli had sex with his dead victims and also ate some body parts.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) began a probe when 69 plastic bags with human remains were dredged out from sewers around the property in the suburb of Noida.

"In our opinion, this case falls in the rarest of rare category and no mercy can be shown to him," the two-judge bench said in its final order, describing the crimes as "horrifying and barbaric".

Bungalow owner Maninder Singh Pandher was also charged with first degree murder in the same case but he was acquitted in 2009 and now faces homicide charges.