Nitish Katara case: HC notice on Vishal Yadav's parole plea

The Delhi High Court today sought the response of the Delhi Police on a plea by Vishal Yadav, serving life term in the Nitish Katara murder case, seeking a three-month parole to sell his property for arranging funds for his daughter's education.
Justice Ashutosh Kumar also sought the reponse of Neelam Katara, mother of Nitish, on the plea.
The court asked additional standing counsel Rajesh Mahajan, appearing for the Delhi Police, to file a status report after full verification of the facts and listed the matter for December 13.
It said that the notice be also served to witness Ajay Katara to present his case.

Yadav, through senior advocate Puneet Mittal, said he was in custody and could not challenge the December 2014 order of the high court by which his appeal was dismissed in the murder case and sought a three-month parole to engage a lawyer and make other arrangements to exercise his legal and constitutional rights.
He submitted there was no one else to look after his daughter, studying in class 10 , for the purpose of education and that he has to dispose of his property in Ghaziabad's Vaishali to arrange for funds for studies and for his litigation.

He also wished to meet his grandmother who was in her advanced stage of life, the plea said.

On August 29, the Supreme Court had dismissed his plea seeking review of its verdict sending him to prison for 25 years.
Besides Vishal Yadav, the apex court had awarded a 25- year jail term to his cousin Vikas Yadav and 20 years in prison for third convict Sukhdev Pehalwan in the case.
On October 3 last year, the apex court had modified the award of 30-year jail term handed down to the Yadavs by the high court, saying 25 years imprisonment for the offence of murder and five years 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 for Sukhdev by holding that imprisonment for separate offences would not run consecutively, but concurrently.
The top court had earlier dismissed the appeals against their conviction in the case for kidnapping of Katara from a marriage party on the intervening night of February 16-17, 2002 before killing him for his alleged affair with Bharti Yadav, the sister of Vikas Yadav.
It had concurred with the findings of the high court that the offence fell under the category of honour killing which deserved harsh punishment and send a strong message across to possible offenders.

The trio have been serving life term awarded by the lower court in May 2008 for abducting and killing Katara, a business executive and the son of a railway officer, as they opposed the victim's affair with Bharti, the daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav.
D P Yadav is at present in jail in connection with a murder case.
The high court had on April 2, 2014 upheld the verdict of the lower court by describing the offence as "honour killing" stemming from a "deeply-entrenched belief" in the caste system.
Katara was murdered as Vishal and Vikas Yadav did not approve of the victim's affair with Bharti because they belonged to different castes, the lower court had said.