The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the parole application of Vikas Yadav, who is serving a 25-year jail sentence in the 2002 Nitish Katara murder case, PTI reported. In 2016, the top court had awarded the sentence to Vikas Yadav and Vishal Yadav in the murder case, and gave a 20-year term to their accomplice Sukhdev Pehalwan.
Vikas Yadav had conspired to kill 25-year-old Katara because he opposed the alleged relationship he had with his sister and Uttar Pradesh politician DP Yadav’s daughter Bharti Yadav. Katara, a business executive and the son of a railway officer, was abducted and burnt to death in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad city on February 16, 2002.
In a 2014 ruling, the Delhi High Court, which had described the crime as an honour killing, had given a 30-year sentence to the three, against which the accused had appealed.
Although it was considered a ‘rarest of rare’ crime back then, they were not sentenced to death because the courts believed that the three were not beyond reformation. The three were first given a life term by a lower court in 2008.
Yadav had sought parole on the grounds that he had already served 17-and-a-half years in prison, Live Law reported. To this, the Supreme Court said: “How can you claim a fundamental right to parole...after being found guilty and sentenced to 25 years.”
A bench, led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi heard the plea. The court also reminded Yadav’s counsel that his review and curative pleas against his conviction had also been rejected, the Hindustan Times reported.
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