Nitish Katara murder: SC seeks Delhi govt reply on Vikas Yadav's plea seeking parole

The Supreme Court Friday sought reply from the Delhi government on a petition filed by Vikas Yadav, who is undergoing 25-year jail term for killing business executive Nitish Katara in 2002, seeking parole for four weeks.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjiv Khanna issued notice on the plea after Vikas Yadav's counsel said that his client is in jail for the last 17 years.

On October 3, 2016, the apex court had awarded 25-year jail term without any benefit of remission to Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav for their role in the sensational kidnapping and killing of Katara. Another co-convict Sukhdev Pehalwan was also handed down 20-year jail term in the case.

The Delhi High Court, while upholding the life imprisonment awarded to Vikas and Vishal Yadav by the trial court, had earlier specified the jail term and had awarded 30-year sentence, without any remission, to both of them. It had awarded 25-year jail term to third convict Pehalwan.

The apex court, however, had modified the award of 30-year jail term, saying that the 25-year imprisonment for the offence of murder and five-year 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 to be awarded to third co-convict Pehalwan in the case by holding that imprisonment for separate offences would not run consecutively but concurrently.

The court had already dismissed the appeals against their convictions in the case for kidnapping Katara from a marriage party on the intervening night of February 16 and 17, 2002 before killing him for his alleged affair with Bharti Yadav, sister of Vikas Yadav, because they belonged to different castes.