New Delhi: Vikas and Vishal Yadav, son and nephew of dreaded UP politician D P Yadav, will not come out of jail till 2027 as the Supreme Court ordered them on Monday to serve 25 years in prison for the brutal "honour killing" of Nitish Katara in 2002 for being in love with Vikas' sister Bharti.
A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan said the Delhi high court was correct in imposing a 25-year sentence on Vikas and Vishal for the murder but erred in asking them to serve another five years for the offence of destruction of evidence.
The third convict and an employee of D P Yadav, Sukhdev Yadav, will undergo 20 years in prison and pay a fine of Rs 20,000. The apex court upheld the HC's ruling that the murder was an honour killing and called it a medieval view of "brotherly honour". To impose so-called brotherly or fatherly honour or class honour by eliminating her (Bharti's) choice is a crime of extreme brutality, more so, when it is done under a guise. It is a vice, condemnable and deplorable perception of honour, comparable to medieval obsessive assertions," the court observed.
The Delhi government and Katara's mother Neelam Katara had sought death penalty for Vikas and Vishal. One of the grounds for demanding so was that Vikas had committed the crime in February 2002 even as he was out on bail in the Jessica Lal murder case. While the SC did not award death sentence, it rejected the convicts' argument that the HC could not award a fixed term that would rule out the possibility of remission after 14 years in jail.
Vikas was later convicted in the Jessica Lal case for destruction of evidence and was sentenced to four years imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2,000. In that case, the SC had upheld the life sentence of Siddhartha Vashisht aka Manu Sharma.
Dwelling on the honour killing aspect of the crime, the apex court said, "The two accused, who though highly educated in good educational institutions, had not cultivated the ability to abandon despicable feelings and attitude..."
Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Misra said, "One may feel 'my honour is my life' but that does not mean sustaining one's honour at the cost of another.Freedom, independence, constitutional identity, individual choice and thought of a woman, be a wife or sister or daughter or mother, cannot be allowed to be curtailed definitely not by application of physical force or threat or mental cruelty in the name of self-assumed honour."
The court also slammed the practice of khap panchayats passing orders against a boy and girl marrying as per their choice and free will. Justice Misra said, "Neither the family members nor the members of the collective have any right to assault the boy chosen by the girl. Her individual choice is her self-respect and creating dent in it is destroying her honour."
Counsel for Vikas and Vishal had questioned the HC's power to impose fixed term sentences when the IPC provided for life sentence, which generally meant the state government had the power to remit the sentence after a prisoner served 14 years in jail.
The SC rejected the argument and said, "We find that the imposition of fixed term sentence on the appellants by the high court cannot be found fault with." However, it said the HC having not directed the convicts to first serve the sentence for destruction of evidence, could not have ordered that the sentences would run consecutively.
A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan said the Delhi high court was correct in imposing a 25-year sentence on Vikas and Vishal for the murder but erred in asking them to serve another five years for the offence of destruction of evidence.
The third convict and an employee of D P Yadav, Sukhdev Yadav, will undergo 20 years in prison and pay a fine of Rs 20,000. The apex court upheld the HC's ruling that the murder was an honour killing and called it a medieval view of "brotherly honour". To impose so-called brotherly or fatherly honour or class honour by eliminating her (Bharti's) choice is a crime of extreme brutality, more so, when it is done under a guise. It is a vice, condemnable and deplorable perception of honour, comparable to medieval obsessive assertions," the court observed.
The Delhi government and Katara's mother Neelam Katara had sought death penalty for Vikas and Vishal. One of the grounds for demanding so was that Vikas had committed the crime in February 2002 even as he was out on bail in the Jessica Lal murder case. While the SC did not award death sentence, it rejected the convicts' argument that the HC could not award a fixed term that would rule out the possibility of remission after 14 years in jail.
Vikas was later convicted in the Jessica Lal case for destruction of evidence and was sentenced to four years imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2,000. In that case, the SC had upheld the life sentence of Siddhartha Vashisht aka Manu Sharma.
Dwelling on the honour killing aspect of the crime, the apex court said, "The two accused, who though highly educated in good educational institutions, had not cultivated the ability to abandon despicable feelings and attitude..."
Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Misra said, "One may feel 'my honour is my life' but that does not mean sustaining one's honour at the cost of another.Freedom, independence, constitutional identity, individual choice and thought of a woman, be a wife or sister or daughter or mother, cannot be allowed to be curtailed definitely not by application of physical force or threat or mental cruelty in the name of self-assumed honour."
The court also slammed the practice of khap panchayats passing orders against a boy and girl marrying as per their choice and free will. Justice Misra said, "Neither the family members nor the members of the collective have any right to assault the boy chosen by the girl. Her individual choice is her self-respect and creating dent in it is destroying her honour."
Counsel for Vikas and Vishal had questioned the HC's power to impose fixed term sentences when the IPC provided for life sentence, which generally meant the state government had the power to remit the sentence after a prisoner served 14 years in jail.
The SC rejected the argument and said, "We find that the imposition of fixed term sentence on the appellants by the high court cannot be found fault with." However, it said the HC having not directed the convicts to first serve the sentence for destruction of evidence, could not have ordered that the sentences would run consecutively.