By IANS,
New Delhi : A city court is likely to pronounce its verdict in the 2002 murder of Nitish Katara, the son of a bureaucrat, in which Uttar Pradesh politician D.P. Yadav’s son Vikas Yadav is the main accused.
The pronouncement of the verdict will depend on the hearing the Delhi High Court gives early Wednesday to the plea of Vikas Yadav, who Tuesday sought stay on the trial court’s verdict and re-examination of key witness Ajay Katara.
A bench comprising Justices Manmohan Sarin and Manmohan passed on Vikas Yadav’s plea to a single-judge bench to be heard early Wednesday morning.
Special Public Prosecutor B.S. Joon, appearing on behalf of the state, opposed Yadav’s plea that the high court should put a stay on the judgement Wednesday and that Ajay Katara should be summoned again.
Earlier in the day, the trial court rejected Yadav’s application raising objections on the affidavit Ajay Katara filed on Saturday. Ajay had affirmed the authenticity of a sting operation carried out by a newspaper.
Additional Sessions Judge Ravinder Kaur, while rejecting the application, asked counsel not to file any other application.
On Saturday, Ajay told the court that during the newspaper’s sting operation he was tricked into making the statements under the influence of liquor. In the sting, Ajay was shown as saying he never saw Vikas and his cousin Vishal Yadav taking away Nitish from a marriage party in Ghaziabad Feb 16, 2002. Nitish was found murdered after that fateful night.
On the basis of the sting operation, counsel for Vikas and Vishal filed an application in the high court, seeking prosecution of Ajay for falsely deposing in the trial.
Nitish Katara, son of a senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by Vikas in 2002, his cousin Vishal and Sukhdev. They resented Nitish’s alleged relationship with Vikas’s sister Bharati.