Nitish Katara murder case: How SC delivered justice

The Supreme Court on Monday sentenced Vikas Yadav and Vishal Yadav to an imprisonment of 25 years in the 2002 Nitish Katara murder case.

The decision brought to an end a 14-year-long legal battle for justice which owes much to a process of judicial engineering which filled gaps in sentencing.

Though the sentence provided for murder in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) is death or imprisonment for life, the Supreme Court had worked on a third alternative as the deterrent effect of sentencing had waned with remission to life convicts being granted in a routine manner after 14 years of jail term.

While it took years for the fixed term sentencing to be accepted as the third alternative, the Katara family had been lucky enough as the law developed with the progress of the case.

The wide gap between death and life sentence was first noted by the Supreme Court in the Swamy Shraddhananda case in which the court narrowed down the gap by barring remission for the remaining natural life of the convict.

This was on July 22, 2008, within two months of the conclusion of the trial in the Nitish Katara case. The Shraddhananda case was questioned by many but by the time the 2002 case reached the Supreme Court, the fixed-term sentencing - as against life imprisonment - had already taken ground.

After the conclusion of trial in the Nitish Katara case, the trial court on May 30, 2008, had decided against awarding death sentence and had sentenced Vikas and Vishal to life.

The Delhi High Court on February 6, 2015, awarded 25 years fixed term for Vikas and his cousin Vishal for killing Katara, who was having an affair with their sister.

While the Delhi High Court awarded jail term of 25 years under Section 302 for murder, the controversy over the right of the judiciary to go beyond the statute book which gave no such option was yet to die down.

A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court settled the controversy in the V Sriharan case by upholding the Shraddhananda judgment on December 2, 2015, about ten months after the high court decision against Vikas and Vishal.

Vikas and Vishal had approached the Supreme Court in appeal. Though the apex court refused to go into conviction, it agreed to consider their plea challenging the fixed term sentence. This was in August 2015.

The two brothers had a point. The Shraddhananda formula was followed as a precedent in a number of cases where varied terms of 20 years, 25 years and 30 years imprisonment without remissions were ordered but the correctness of the judgments was questioned by a Supreme Court bench in 2012.

Justice Madan B Lokur observed in a judgment in 2012 that the remission power had effectively been nullified by awarding sentences of 20 years, 25 years and in some cases sentences without any remission.

"Is this permissible? Can this Court (or any court for that matter) restrain the appropriate government from granting remission of a sentence to a convict?" the bench comprising Justice Lokur asked.

While the petitions by Vikas and Vishal were pending, a Constitution Bench of the court on December 2, 2015, put the controversy to rest.

The development of law culminated with the authoritative binding decision of the bench, months before their petitions were taken up for consideration.

"We are of the convinced opinion that the situation that has been projected in Swamy Shraddhananda and approved in V Sriharan speaks eloquently of judicial experience and the fixed term sentence cannot be said to be unauthorised in law," the court observed, while upholding the fixed term sentencing in the Katara case.

The expanded option which allows courts to award less than death but more than 14 years (which life practically means) helps "strike a balance regard being had to the gravity of the offence", the Court observed.

The Court rightly noted that just punishment was the collective cry of the society.

And until Parliament intervened to fill the gap, the scheme of sentencing developed by the judiciary will continue to help preserve faith of the people in the justice delivery system.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

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