The Supreme Court on Thursday slammed for its "casual approach" the AIIMS medical board, constituted to assess the condition of the relative of a convict in the Nitish Katara case.
Vikas Yadav, who is serving a 25-year jail term in the 2002 murder case, has sought interim bail to attend to his ailing mother.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan said a report of AIIMS was submitted in a "cursory manner" without going into the question whether or not Yadav's mother surgery was needed.
"Nobody is doing their job. It's very casual approach. No medical board is prepared to work. The medical report filed by AIIMS is most casual. Medical boards can't act like postmen. They just go there and tell us what the doctor has said. We are surprised that medical board is not willing to work," the bench said.
The top court went on, "We direct Vipin Tyagi of Yashoda Hospital to remain present through video conferencing on Tuesday and inform us about medical condition of the appellant's mother." The top court previously observed that the state had to be fair as it pulled up the Uttar Pradesh and Delhi governments over the delay in constituting a medical board to examine the woman's condition.
It expressed surprise and said despite its April 2 order, it took 10 days to constitute a medical board to examine the condition of his mother, admitted to Yashoda Hospital in Ghaziabad.
Yadav said his mother Umesh was critically ill and hospitalised in the ICU.
The treating doctors, the plea added, advised immediate surgical intervention given her medical condition.
On October 3, 2016, the top court sentenced Yadav without any benefit of remission.
He is the son of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav. His cousin Vishal Yadav was also punished for the kidnapping and murder of business executive Katara.
The duo was against Katara's alleged affair with Bharti Yadav, sister of Vikas, as they belonged to different castes.
Another co-convict Sukhdev Pehalwan was given a 20-year jail term without any remission benefit.
Earlier, the Delhi High Court, while upholding the life imprisonment awarded to Vikas and Vishal Yadav by the trial court, specified a 30-year sentence, without any remission, to both of them.
It had awarded a 25-year jail term to the third convict Pehalwan.
The Delhi prisons administration had last year rejected Yadav's remission request after his conduct was found to be unsatisfactory.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
