IANS
New Delhi

The Supreme Court yesterday rejected a plea by Neelam Katara seeking enhancement of the sentence for Vishal and Vikas Yadav who have been convicted for murdering her son Nitish Katara in February 2002.
A bench of justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and justice R Banumathi said that while it was a murder and could even have been pre-meditated, the crime was most certainly not heinous or a case of honour killing. As such it did not merit the capital punishment or life sentence.
Neelam Katara had moved the top court questioning the Delhi High Court order sentencing Vikas and Vishal Yadav to 25 and five years sentences which are to be run one after the other.
“I am not very sure it is really a matter of honour killing as he (Nitish Katara) was not from backward caste or disreputable family,” Khehar observed as senior counsel Harish Salve appearing for petitioner told the court that it was a case of honour killing.
The court said “The Yadav family knew that Vikas’s sister Bharti was in a relationship with Nitish,” adding that “Bharti could not have invited Nitish to her sister’s wedding without the family’s permission”.
The court told Salve that it was of the opinion that the murder was not a case of honour killing. It observed that something had apparently gone wrong while Nitish and Bharti were dancing at the wedding and this had prompted  Vikas and his cousin Vishal to kidnap and murder Nitish.
The court also did not agree with Salve’s contention that the case was a heinous crime. The burning of the body was the only destruction of evidence and same does not amount to heinousness of the crime, the court pointed out.
“It is just a murder, nothing more. It may have been planned. Every murder is planned,” the court observed.
“Nobody can ease the pain when a child is lost,” the court said in apparent reference to the presence of Neelam Katara in the court room as it declined the plea.