Neelam Katara has told the Delhi High Court that she may be “eliminated” if Vikas Yadav, convicted of murdering her son Nitish, is released on parole.
She also opposed the plea of Vikas, serving 30-year jail term without remission for the killing, saying the convict may abscond to another country.
The victim’s mother has made the submissions in an affidavit before Justice Siddharth Mridul while opposing Vikas’ plea for two weeks’ parole to sell his ancestral property in Uttar Pradesh.
Neelam said that being the complainant in the case she has a “grave fear that now that the Supreme Court has decided the Special Leave Petition on the matter of conviction and upheld the verdict of the high court that Vikas Yadav is found guilty of the murder of Nitish Katara. “If the petitioner (Vikas) comes out on bail then he may eliminate her/other important witnesses.”
The court fixed the matter for March 9 for filing of reply of Vikas on Neelam’s submissions. Neelam was responding to court’s notice issued on January 27 seeking her reply on Vikas’s plea for parole.
The high court on March 27 last year granted seven-day custody parole to Vikas to visit his 93-year-old grandfather who underwent an angioplasty. The high court had on February 6, 2015 enhanced the sentence of Vikas and his cousin Vishal from life imprisonment to 25 years without remission for murdering Nitish and five more years for destruction of evidence in the case.
Yadavs’ acquaintance Sukhdev Yadav alias Pehelwan was also awarded an enhanced life sentence of 20 years without remission by the high court.
The three were awarded life term by a trial court for abducting and killing Nitish, a business executive and son of an IAS officer, on the intervening night of February 16-17, 2002.
They did not approve of the victim’s affair with Bharti, daughter of DP Yadav. The high court had on April 2, 2014 upheld the verdict of the lower court, describing the offence as “honour killing” stemming from a “deeply-entrenched belief” in caste system.
In August last year, the Supreme Court had upheld the conviction of Vikas and others in the case.
