The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition filed by Vikas Yadav for a review of the Supreme Court decision to sentence him to 25 years’ imprisonment for the murder of business executive Nitish Katara in 2002.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justice S.A. Bobde decided the review petition by circulation in their chambers. The judges found no reason to interfere with the Supreme Court’s judgment pronounced on October 3, 2016.

In a 93-page judgment, a Bench led by Justice (as he was then) Misra had in October 2016 confirmed the prison sentence of 25 years without remission to Vikas, Uttar Pradesh politician D.P. Yadav’s son.

The court had concluded that the murder was an honour killing devised to bring to an abrupt end Mr. Katara’s relationship with Bharti Yadav, the convict’s sister.

The court found that the murder of a young man in cold blood in the guise of brotherly or fatherly honour, and thus “eliminating” a woman’s choice of her life partner was a crime of extreme brutality.

The Supreme Court had observed that “honour” was not the exclusive property of relatives who kill or assault the very man a girl in the family chooses to love.

Legal tangle

The court had pointed out that it was the very factum of honour killing in the case that led the highest court to uphold the “harsh sentence” awarded by the Delhi High Court. The convicts cannot seek release through remission for the next quarter of a century.

In its judgment, the court had re-called the criminal antecedents of Vikas, and the fact that he was prosecuted in the murder case of Jessica Lal, a celebrity bartender.

The court observed that the Nitish Katara murder committed when Vikas was out on bail in the Jessica Lal case.