New Delhi, July 1 The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the interim bail of Vikas Yadav, a convict in the 2002 Nitish Katara murder case, for the next four weeks for post-operative care of his mother.
A Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and K. Vinod Chandran clarified that it will not further extend the interim bail on the poor health condition of the petitioner’s mother.
In an order passed on April 24 this year, the top court, in a relief to Vikas Yadav, who has undergone actual incarceration for 23 years, enlarged him on temporary bail till May 8, 2025. “Only for the purposes of enabling the petitioner to meet his ailing mother and to ensure that appropriate treatment is provided to her for the time being, we grant temporary bail to the petitioner,” had ordered a Bench of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan.
However, the interim bail was extended from time to time by the apex court. It told Vikas Yadav, the son of Uttar Pradesh politician D.P. Yadav, to furnish a bail bond in the sum of Rs one lakh with one local surety in the like amount and to report to the local police station every day at 11 a.m.
It also asked the petitioner not to make any attempt to contact any of the witnesses who have deposed against him, including victim Neelam Katara, the mother of the deceased Nitish Katara, and her immediate relatives.
In its order, the Supreme Court opined that the petitioner’s mother be examined by a medical board of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, and directed submission of the medical report on or before May 7, 2025.
During the period of interim bail, Vikas Yadav was required to confine himself to his residence at Ghaziabad except visiting Yashoda Hospital after his mother was shifted back there from AIIMS Delhi.
In the sensational case, the top court recently granted three months’ furlough to co-convict Sukhdev Yadav alias ‘Pehalwan’, who is serving a 20-year jail term.
Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav, among others, were convicted and sentenced to 25 years of actual imprisonment without consideration of remission for kidnapping Katara from a marriage party in February 2002 and then killing him for his alleged affair with Vikas’ sister Bharti Yadav.
Katara was murdered as Vishal and Vikas Yadav did not approve of his alleged relationship with Bharti because they belonged to different castes, the trial court had observed in its verdict.
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