No death penalty for Katara killers: SC

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday reiterated that Nitish Katara's killers - Vikas and Vishal Yadav - would not be awarded death penalty but said it would weigh the option of sentencing them to lifelong incarceration as punishment for the young man's gruesome murder 13 years ago.
On October 9, the same bench of Justices J S Khehar and R Bhanumathi had rejected a similar plea by Nitish's mother Neelam Katara, who had argued that her son was murdered because he had danced with Bharti Yadav, whose brothers believed in the despicable 'honour killing'.
When senior advocate Gopal Subramaniam argued for the Delhi government and sought the extreme penalty for the Yadavs, who have already been convicted by the apex court, the bench said the crime did not fit into the 'rarest of rare' category to warrant imposition of death penalty.
Dismissing the petition, the bench said, "We have already upheld their conviction for the murder. We have already ruled out imposition of death penalty on them. The high court has sentenced them to 30 years in prison. They have already spent a substantial time in jail. We will decide whether there could be a sentence that could fit the gravity of the crime and which is in between 30 years in prison and life long incarceration."
It added, "What is in between life sentence and death sentence we will find out after hearing all sides."
Subramaniam pointed out that though the convicts had spent quite some time in jail, it was marked by Vishal visiting hospital 98 times from jail. The bench said, "That misuse of court process has cost them. Harsh orders have been passed against them."
The bench said determining the appropriate sentence in this case was an important issue. "The sentence they are facing now is 30 years in jail. You (Subramaniam) please assist us to find out what could be that sentence between life imprisonment (which usually is for 14 years after which a prisoner gets released) and just short of death sentence," it said and posted the matter for hearing in the first week of February.
The bench has already upheld the conviction of Vikas and his cousin Vishal for Nitish's murder in 2002 and in February will hear arguments to determine the quantum of sentence, which was quantified at 30 years by the Delhi high court .
The bench also told Neelam Katara that it would permit her counsel to present arguments when it decides the quantum of punishment. Neelam had said the HC had returned a specific finding that Nitish's murder was an 'honour killing' as Vikas and Vishal disapproved his intimacy with their sister Bharti. She narrated how her son was mercilessly beaten by the two, then strangulated and set afire on February 16, 2002.