New Delhi: Vikas and Vishal Yadav, serving 30 years jail term for brutally killing Nitish Katara in 2002, on Friday escaped death penalty, with the Supreme Court ruling it out, rejecting the plea of the victim’s mother Neelam Katara who termed it as a ‘rarest of rare’ crime.
“What they (Yadavs) did cannot be condoned, but it (the offence) is not so heinous and abhorring that warrants death,” a bench of justices J.S. Khehar and R. Banumathi said.
“I don’t see it as honour killing,” the bench observed at the outset when Salve opened arguments on the plea seeking enhancement of the sentence, saying that the high court had held it as the honour killing.
“I am asking for death penalty,” the senior lawyer said, adding that the convicts, who were educated and hailed from “good families”, had killed the youth in pre-meditated and brutal manner and mutilated the body before burning it.
“It was just a murder. That is it... They (convicts) have also suffered the sentence for 16 years,” the court said.
