The Supreme Court of India.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended by four weeks the interim bail granted to Vikas Yadav, undergoing a 25-year jail term in the 2002 Nitish Katara murder case, to attend to his ailing mother.
A bench of Justices M M Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh asked Yadav to approach the Delhi High Court for seeking remission in the case.
The top court has been extending interim bail to Yadav on medical grounds.
On May 8, the top court took into account a report of the AIIMS medical board which said Yadav's mother was hemodynamically stable and fit to be discharged.
The AIIMS in its opinion said if the patient failed to respond to conservative management (physiotherapy and medications), then surgical decompression of the lumbar spinal canal was recommended.
The top court then extended the interim bail granted to him to look after his mother.
On April 24, the top court granted interim bail to Yadav to meet his ailing mother and directed that she be examined by a medical board of AIIMS doctors.
Imposing conditions, the top court directed the convict to remain confined to his house in Ghaziabad and not get in touch with the case's witnesses, including Katara's mother Neelam Katara.
The apex court granted him the relief subject to depositing a bail bond of Rs 1 lakh and a surety of the like amount.
Vikas is the son of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav. His cousin Vishal Yadav was also punished for the kidnapping and murder of business executive Katara.
The duo was against Katara's alleged affair with Bharti Yadav, sister of Vikas, as they belonged to different castes.
Another co-convict Sukhdev Pehalwan was given a 20-year jail term without any remission benefit.
Earlier, the Delhi High Court, while upholding the life imprisonment awarded to Vikas and Vishal Yadav by the trial court, specified a 30-year sentence, without any remission, to both of them.
It had awarded a 25-year jail term to the third convict, Pehalwan.
The Delhi prisons administration had last year rejected Yadav's remission request after his conduct was found to be unsatisfactory.