By IANS,
Ghaziabad : Ajay Katara, a witness in the Nitish Katara murder case in which parliamentarian D.P. Yadav’s son Vikas and neophew Vishal were convicted, was fired upon by five people when he went to meet a friend here, the police said.
Ajay Katara told the police that he was fired upon Wednesday night in Ghaziabad’s Patel Nagar.
The Sihani Gate police on the complaint of Ajay Katara have registered a case against five people under section 307 of the Indian Penal Code.
Nitish Katara, son of a senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, was kidnapped and murdered after he attended a wedding in Ghaziabad Feb 16, 2002. His half burnt body was found in a village in Bulandshahar in Uttar Pradesh.
Vikas Yadav, son of parliament member D.P. Yadav, and his cousin Vishal Yadav were convicted by the Patiala House court in New Delhi for Nitish Katara’s murders and were sentenced to life imprisonment. Vikas and Vishal resented Nitish’s relationship with their sister Bharati.
Ajay Katara’s testimony was crucial in the onviction of the two cousins.
Ajay told IANS that Wednesday night at about 9 p.m. when he was going to meet his friend Pawan Agrawal at Patel Nagar III in Ghaziabad, five people opened fire at him.
Since his friend’s house is situated in a narrow lane, he had left his Indica car and security men at the main road and walked through the lane.
He said that suddenly he was fired upon. He crawled on the ground and escaped unhurt. He saw five people, who had taken position behind a Scorpio vehicle, were firing at him.
Ajay called the police from his mobile phone and also called up his security personnel. “On my SOS call, my security staff took up position and foiled the attack,” he said.
Katara said this was fourth attack on his life.
“Earlier, they have attacked me in Meerut, and then they attacked me at Mohan Nagar. They tried to poison me and now for the fourth time they have tried to eliminate me, but thank god I escaped,” he said.
Vijay Bhushan, superintendent of police-city, said Katara has named five people – Nand Kishore Gurjar, Vivek Bhatnagar, Subhash Yadav, Anurag Yadav and Dharmendra Yadav – for the attack.
The police officer said that all the five people are absconding.