Katara case: Delhi High Court upholds dismissal of two policemen

Source: thehindu.com

The Delhi High Court has upheld the dismissal of two policemen who allowed Vikas Yadav to leave his hospital room in AIIMS, without parole on the night of Deepavali in 2011. Vikas Yadav was facing trial and serving a 25-year jail term for the murder of Nitish Katara.

A Bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rajnish Bhatnagar rejected the policemen’s appeals against the decision of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), which had agreed with the disciplinary action taken against them.

“The disciplinary and the appellate authorities have said enough and the gravity of the misconduct established against the petitioners is enough to justify the punishment imposed upon them,” the High Court said, while dismissing the appeals of Constable Ramesh Kumar and Head Constable Ishwar Singh.

According to the enquiry report, the two policemen had allowed Yadav to leave the hospital on the intervening night of November 26-27, 2011 from 12.45 a.m. to 6 a.m.

The disciplinary authority had concurred with the findings in the enquiry report and by a common order, had dismissed both policemen on August 14, 2012.

The two policemen, in their appeal in the High Court, had contended that neither the disciplinary authority nor the appellate authority had said that their misconduct had made them unfit for police service.

Rejecting the argument, the High Court, in its 12-page judgement, has said, “We do not find merit in the submission…for the reasons that the disciplinary authority, while passing the order of punishment, has clearly recorded that in view of the grave and serious misconduct found against the petitioners, their conduct is intolerable.”

Katara was kidnapped from a marriage party on the intervening night of February 16-17, 2002, before he was killed for his alleged affair with Vikas Yadav’s sister Bharti, the daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D.P. Yadav.

Katara was killed as Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav did not approve of his affair with Bharti as they belonged to different castes.

On August 29, 2017, the Supreme Court had dismissed the pleas of Vishal and Vikas Yadav, seeking a review of its verdict sending them to prison for 25 years. It had also awarded a 20-year jail term to the third convict, Sukhdev Pehalwan, in the case.