New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday awarded Nitish Katara murder convicts Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav 25 years in prison, reducing their term from 30 years.

The SC sentenced a third convict in the case, Sukhdev Pehalwan, to 20 years in prison.

The Delhi high court earlier sentenced the convicts to 25 years in jail, plus five years for destruction of evidence, with both sentences to run consecutively.

The Supreme Court bench on Monday pronounced the verdict on appeals filed by Vikas and Vishal against the Delhi high court order, which had enhanced their respective life terms — handed down by a lower court — to 25 years in jail without remission and an additional five years for destruction of evidence.

Although the Delhi high court didn’t give them the death penalty — despite holding the murder to be a “rarest of rare” crime — it enhanced the life sentence handed to them by the trial court. The court said that the way the crime was planned and the Yadavs’ post crime conduct showed that a “life sentence, which means only 14 years of imprisonment, is grossly inadequate in the present case.

The Delhi high court bench awarded 25 years rigorous imprisonment to the Yadavs for the murder and five years in addition for destruction of evidence, making it clear that the two sentences will run consecutively. On Monday, the Supreme Court said the sentences would now run concurrently.

Vikas (39), Vishal (37) and Sukhdev (40) were 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, on the night of February 16-17, 2002, as they opposed the victim’s affair with Bharti, daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav.

The high court had on April 2, 2014, upheld the verdict of the lower court in the case by describing the offence as “honour killing” stemming from a “deeply-entrenched belief” in caste system.

Katara was abducted and killed by Vikas, Vishal and Sukhdev as they did not approve of the victim’s affair with Bharti because they belonged to different castes, the court said.

Reacting to the verdict, Nitish Katara’s mother Neelam Katara said she was ‘qualitatively happy’ with the Supreme Court decision. However she added that it would not be a big deal if she asked for 10 years more punishment.