New Delhi: Nitish Katara’s killers Vikas and Vishal Yadav will not be given the death penalty. Rejecting a plea by Katara’s mother, Neelam, the Supreme Court ruled today saying the 2002 murder was not an honour killing and could not be called a rarest of rare case.
The convicts were the Uttar Pradesh politician DP Yadav’s son Vikas and nephew Vishal, and their henchman Sukhdev Pahelwan they were previously sentenced to a 30-year jail term without remission by the Delhi High Court.
Katara’s lawyers argued that it was indeed an honour killing as Nitish was picked up from a party where he was seen with Vikas’s sister Bharti and was killed since the family did not approve of the relationship.
“Nobody can relieve the pain of a mother when a child is lost. It is too big a pain to be relieved by anything or any order. But you will have to show to us how this is heinous? How can this be brought under the rarest of rare category?” said a bench of Justice J S Khehar and Justice R Banumati.
The court said that it could not be termed as honour killing as the Yadav family had not objected to their friendship.
Moreover, the murder was done with a single blow of hammer and not in a brutally heinous manner to warrant death sentence.