The Supreme Court today awarded 25 years of imprisonment each to Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav in connection with the sensational 2002 Nitish Katara murder case. Their servant Sukhdev Pahalwan has been awarded imprisonment for 20 years.
A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan pronounced the verdict on the appeals filed by Vikas and Vishal against the Delhi High Court order which had enhanced the life term to 25 years in jail without remission and an additional five years for destruction of evidence in the case by terming the murder of Katara as "honour killing".
Yadav had made the plea for leniency on September 21 and senior Supreme Court advocate U.R. Lalit appearing for the convict who is the son of former parliamentarian, D.P. Yadav, had told a division bench of the apex court headed by Justice Dipak Misra and Justice C. Nagappan, that his client had already served over 14 years of his jail sentence.
He also said that his client has been serving his jail sentence without parole, despite both the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court granting him custodial parole several times.
The Delhi High Court had on February 6 rejected the plea for giving a death sentence or enhancing life imprisonment to Vikas and his cousin Vishal to 25 years in jail without any remission.
The high court had then held that the murder of Katara, who was in love with Vikas's sister Bharati, was an "honour killing", which was done in a very "carefully planned and premeditated" manner with "extreme vengeance".
The High Court had decided to enhance the sentence awarded by the trial court, saying "amplitude of the gravity of the offence", "cries for the need" that they (the convicts) be "adequately punished".
(With PTI inputs)
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