In Neelam Katara's own words nothing in her till thenprivileged life had prepared her for the events of February 17, 2002. According to Katara, she and her husband and their two sons Nitish and Nitin lived the typical existence of an educated middle class family. Nitish was a good student who did his MBA from IMT Ghaziabad and later joined Reliance as an assistant manager. While Neelam Katara was aware of her son's relationship with his former class mate Bharti Yadav, she was unaware that her father was the powerful western Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav. "I had never heard of him before," she said in earlier interview.
The name and that of his son Vikas and nephew Vishal would come back to haunt Katara. On February 17, 2002, Nitish Katara was bludgeoned and then burnt to death by Vikas and Vishal because they were upset at the relationship between Nitish and Bharti. Katara had to not only confront the fact of her son's brutal murder but also the subsequent death of her husband Nishit due to motor neuron disease. "It was however Nitish's words which helped me pull through," she says. "
