New Delhi: The Supreme Court dismissed Monday the parole plea of Vikas Yadav, who along with his cousin Vishal Yadav is serving a 25-year jail term for killing business executive Nitish Katara in 2002.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Surya Kant did not allow the plea of Vikas Yadav who had sought parole for four weeks on the grounds that it was his constitutional right and he had spent around seventeen-and-half years of total 25 years jail term awarded to him in the case.
“You have been sentenced for 25 years of imprisonment, complete it,” the bench said while dismissing Vikas Yadav’s parole plea.
The bench, meanwhile, also dismissed another plea of Vikas in which he had challenged the constitutional validity of the Delhi High court order awarding him the jail term without any remission.
The plea had said that the courts are not permitted under the statute to specify the time limit of the imprisonment and put a condition that the jail term will operate without any grant of remission. “The petitions are dismissed,” the bench said.
It should be stated here that October 3, 2016, the apex court had awarded a 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 a 20-year jail term in the case.
Prior to this, the Delhi High Court, while upholding the life imprisonment awarded to Vikas and Vishal Yadav by the trial court, had specified a 30-year sentence, without any remission, to both of them. It had awarded a 25-year jail term to third convict Pehalwan.
Vikas, son of controversial Uttar Pradesh politician DP Yadav, and his cousin Vishal Yadav were sentenced for kidnapping and killing Katara on the intervening night of February 16 and 17, 2002 for his alleged affair with Bharti Yadav, sister of Vikas, as they belonged to different castes.
PTI