Capital punishment argued upon in Katara case

New Delhi, May 30 (UNI) A city court today heard arguments on the quantum of sentence in the Nitish Katara murder case with both sides arguing for and against capital punishment for the convicts.

According to the prosecution, Vishal and Vikas Yadav, the son and nephew of former MP D P Yadav, should be punished with death penalty and it filed various judgements before the court, favouring capital punishment for the convicts.

On the other side, defence counsel argued that death punishment should not be given to the convicts as the offence does not come under the provisio ''rarest and rarest'' and death punishment is provided only in rarest of rare offences. It also filed various judgements in favour of Vishal and Vikas Yadav.

After hearing the arguments, the court reserved the matter for pronouncing of judgement on the quantum of sentence for one hour.

Additional Sessions Judge Ravinder Kaur convicted the accused under sections 302 and 364 of IPC on Wednesday.

The duo had killed Nitish Katara, a 24-year-old business executive in Delhi, in the early hours of February 17, 2002.

The son of an IAS officer in the Ministry of Shipping, Nitish had graduated from the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad.

There, he had fallen in love with his classmate, Bharti Yadav, who came from a political family.

Nitish was murdered by Bharti's brother Vikas Yadav, because the family did not approve of their relationship.

Bharti is the daughter of D P Yadav, the ''unrivalled don'' of western Uttar Pradesh. Before entering politics, Yadav had racked up nine murder charges, and was behind a spurious liquor sale, which killed 350 people in the early 1990s.

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