(From top) Nitish Katara’s mother Neelam and brother Nitin after the verdict. Vikas and Vishal in court. (Prem Singh)

New Delhi, May 28: Six years after Nitish Katara was killed, the son and nephew of Uttar Pradesh politician D.P. Yadav have been convicted of his murder.

Additional sessions judge, Patiala House Courts, Ravinder Kaur held Vikas and Vishal Yadav guilty on several counts early this morning, pre-empting a last-minute move by the family to get a stay from Delhi High Court on the judgment.

“I hold Vikas Yadav and Vishal Yadav guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 364 (kidnapping), 201 (destruction of evidence) and 34 (common intention) of the IPC,” she said.

Katara’s family had alleged that the Yadavs killed Nitish because he was in a relationship with Bharti, D.P. Yadav’s daughter.

The duo were accused of picking up Nitish from a wedding that both he and Bharti had attended on the night of February 16, 2002. That was the last anyone saw him alive. He was allegedly beaten to death and his body burnt. The charred body was recovered later and had to be DNA-tested to establish his identity.

A key witness, Ajay Katara, who had seen Nitish leave the party with the duo, later retracted his statement, making it difficult for the prosecution to prove the case. Much of the evidence against the duo is circumstantial.

Details of the 500-odd page judgment are not yet available. The judge has fixed May 30 as the day on which she would hear arguments on the quantum of sentence that the duo would get. The maximum sentence for such a crime is either death or a life term.

This is Vikas’s second conviction. He has already been awarded a four-year jail term for his role in the murder of model Jessica Lal. But this is Vishal’s first conviction, so he could get away with a lighter sentence.

The cousins, hemmed in by dozens of policemen, were present in court when the judgment was pronounced. Their lawyer later claimed justice had not been done and accused the media of being unfair to them.

“The media has always projected a one-sided picture of Vikas and Vishal. They have been portrayed as rebels and criminals. We have not lost hope yet. We shall appeal to the superior court. We shall make every effort to get them justice,” he said.

But for Nitish’s mother Neelam Katara, who had first moved the country’s top court and got the case transferred for trial to Delhi from Ghaziabad (where the Yadavs writ ran large) for a fair trial, it was a culmination of six years of tireless efforts for justice for her dead son.

“My faith in the judiciary has been vindicated,” she told reporters waiting outside the court.

Katara fought a dogged single-handed battle for justice for her older son. Her husband died within two years of her son’s death.

The case almost fell through when key witness Ajay turned hostile and Bharti repeatedly shunned court notices to depose. When she did, she admitted that she and Nitish were friends, but also strongly defended her brothers.

On Wednesday, the Yadavs made an abortive bid to get the judgment stayed. They filed an application in the high court seeking recall of Ajay as a witness. The plea was dismissed.