New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear a plea challenging 25-year jail sentence awarded to convict Vikas Yadav in connection with the Nitish Katara murder case. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi and comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna said they would hear the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Vikas tomorrow.
“The 25 years jail sentence awarded to him is wrong and is constitutionally incorrect,” the convict claimed. Yadav had murdered Katara, an Indian business executive, on February 17, 2002, as he was against the 25-year-old businessman’s friendship with his sister Bharti Yadav. On May 30, 2008, a trial court had found Vikas and his cousin Vishal guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment. Two months later, a third accused Sukhdev Pehalwan was also sentenced to life imprisonment by a Delhi court.
However, in 2015, Delhi High Court had upheld the trial court’s verdict of life terms for the Yadav brothers and Pehalwan and awarded a jail term of 25 years without remission to the brothers and 20 years’ imprisonment without remission to Pehalwan. In 2016, the apex court too agreed to the quantum of punishment awarded to the accused by the Delhi High Court.
