The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought the response of the Delhi Police on a plea by Vishal Yadav, who is serving life term in the Nitish Katara murder case, seeking three-month parole to sell his property to arrange funds for his daughter’s education.
Justice Ashutosh Kumar also sought the response of Nitish’s mother Neelam Katara on the plea.
The court asked Additional Standing Counsel Rajesh Mahajan, appearing for the Delhi Police, to file a status report after full verification of facts and listed the matter for December 13. It directed that a notice also be served to witness Ajay Katara to present his case.
Yadav, through senior advocate Puneet Mittal, said he was in custody and could not challenge the December 2014 order of the High Court, by which his appeal was dismissed in the murder case and sought three-month parole to engage a lawyer and make other arrangements to exercise his legal and constitutional rights.
He submitted there was no one else to look after his daughter, studying in Class X, for the purpose of education and that he has to dispose of his property in Ghaziabad’s Vaishali to arrange funds for her studies and for his litigation. He also wished to meet his grandmother, the plea said.
On August 29, the Supreme Court had dismissed his plea seeking review of its verdict sending him to prison for 25 years.
Besides Yadav, the apex court had awarded a 25- year jail term to his cousin Vikas and 20 years in prison for third convict Sukhdev Pehalwan in the case.
Term modified
On October 3 last year, the apex court had modified the award of the 30-year jail term handed down to the Yadavs by the High Court, saying that 25 years imprisonment for the offence of murder and five years’ jail term for causing destruction of evidence would run concurrently and not consecutively. It had also scaled down the jail term of 25 years to 20 years for Sukhdev by holding that imprisonment for separate offences would not run consecutively, but concurrently.
The top court had earlier dismissed the appeals against their conviction in the case for kidnapping of Katara from a marriage party on the intervening night of February 16-17, 2002, before killing him for his alleged affair with Bharti Yadav, the sister of Vikas Yadav.
Honour killing
It had concurred with the findings of the High Court that the offence fell under the category of honour killing, which deserved harsh punishment and sent a strong message across to possible offenders.
The trio have been serving life term awarded by the lower court in May 2008 for abducting and killing Katara, a business executive and the son of a railway officer, as they opposed his affair with Bharti, the daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D. P. Yadav. The politician is in jail at present in connection with a murder case.
The High Court had on April 2, 2014, upheld the verdict of the lower court by describing the offence as “honour killing” stemming from a “deeply-entrenched belief” in the caste system.
