Nitish Katara's murder honour killing, warrants death penalty, High Court told

NEW DELHI: Nitish Katara's murder was a honour killing for which the three convicts, including UP politician D P Yadav's son Vikas, deserve death penalty, the victim's mother today told the Delhi High Court.

"The trial court as well as this court have already held that this is a case of honour killing. I want to add one thing that the honour killing falls under the the rarest of rare category of cases warranting imposition of death penalty," the counsel for Neelam Katara told a bench of justices Gita Mittal and J R Midha.

Concluding the arguments on the quantum of sentence, lawyer P K Dey said "the circumstances in which victim Nitish was killed entails award of death penalty, nothing less than this. One person was killed in such a brutal manner and later burnt. It is honour killing, which is the rarest of rare offence."

Assailing the lower court's order, the lawyer said "it (the burning of body and subsequent actions) is not merely the destruction of evidence. It is total disregard to a human body. The incident is diabolic and shook the consciousness of the society."

Seeking enhancement of the sentence, the counsel said the one of the convicts has committed eleven offences from 2002 to 2013 and they are not only criminal offences but amounted to interfering with the judicial administration.

Though the trial court had held the murder as "honour killing", it did not give them death penalty saying imposition of life sentence would act as a deterrent, Dey said.

"It may be true in other cases that life term is harsher punishment as a convict dies every minute in jail but not in this case where the convicts are economically and politically very strong and come out of jail within two or three years," he said.