New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the parole plea of Vikas Yadav, who is serving 25-year jail term for killing business executive Nitish Katara in 2002, and said ‘complete your 25-year sentence’.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said that Yadav was awarded 25 years in prison and it has to be served without any grant of remission. The bench also dismissed another plea of Yadav in which he had challenged the constitutional validity of the Delhi High court order awarding him 25 years of jail term without any remission.
"You have been sentenced for 25 years of imprisonment, complete it," the bench said while dismissing the plea of Yadav for grant of four-week parole.
"Why should you go on parole, tell us. Parole is a fundamental right, and I have already spent a long time in jail," the court added.
Yadav, who sought a grant of parole, has already served over 17 years of jail term in the Katara murder case. Besides him, the court had awarded a 25-year jail term to his cousin Vishal Yadav while another co-convict, Sukhdev Pehalwan, was given a 20-year jail term in the murder case.
The three are serving life term awarded by the lower court in May 2008 for abducting and killing Katara -- a business executive and the son of a railway officer. In 2014, the High Court had upheld the verdict of the lower court after which they approached the supreme court.
However, the Supreme Court in 2016 reduced their sentence to 25 years without remission while noting that "Nitish Katara's murder was committed in a planned and cold-blooded manner with the motive that has emanated due to feeling of some kind of uncalled for and unwarranted superiority based on caste."
The apex court had also dismissed Yadav’s plea seeking a review of the verdict saying that there was no reason to interfere in the High Court’s decision.