On Tuesday, the Supreme Court extended Vikas Yadav's interim bail by four weeks to allow him to attend to his ailing mother. The top court has been continuously extending bail to the accused on medical grounds for his 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.
On April 24, the top court had 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.
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 that if the patient failed to respond to conservative management (physiotherapy and medications), then surgical decompression of the lumbar spinal canal was recommended.
Vikas Yadav is the son of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav. His cousin, Vishal Yadav, was also convicted for the kidnapping and murder of the 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. 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.
