The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the interim bail plea of Vikas Yadav, who is serving a 25-year jail term for murder of Nitish Katara in 2002, on the ground that he has to fulfil his business obligations.
A Bench of justices Dipak Misra and C. Nagappan said the appeal against Delhi High Court order awarding 25 years jail to him without any remission may be listed for August 29.
Senior advocate U.R. Lalit appearing for Yadav, son of former MP D.P. Yadav, said the application for interim bail has been moved as he has already undergone over 14 years of sentence.
He sought time from the court for detailed hearing of the appeal against the sentence awarded to Yadav by the High Court.
The Bench then posted the matter for further hearing after senior counsel Dayan Krishnan, appearing for Delhi government, did not opposed the request for additional time for hearing on the matter.
The Delhi High Court on February 6 rejected the plea for death sentence and had enhanced the life imprisonment of Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal to 25 years in jail without any remission and an additional five years for destruction of evidence in the honour killing of Katara.
The court had held that the murder of Katara, who was in love with Vikas’s sister, was an “honour killing” which was done in a very “carefully planned and premeditated” manner with “extreme vengeance”.
Yadavs’ acquaintance Sukhdev Yadav alias Pehelwan was also awarded an enhanced life sentence of 20 years without remission by the court which held that the crime fell in “rarest of rare category”, but saved them from the gallows saying possibility of their reformation and rehabilitation is not “unforseeably foreclosed”.
The High Court had decided to enhance the sentence awarded by the Trial Court to the trio, saying “amplitude of the gravity of the offence”, “cries for the need” that they be “adequately punished”.
It also enhanced the fines imposed on Vikas and Vishal by slapping an amount of Rs. 54 lakh each on them.
