Bharti Yadav meets lawyer ahead of deposition in court

NEW DELHI: Bharti Yadav, a key prosecution witness in the 2002 Nitish Katara murder case, met her lawyer on Monday, two days ahead of her crucial and long-delayed deposition in a local court.

Amid speculation about her whereabouts, she met lawyer S C Bhuttan and is understood to have discussed details of the case in which her brother Vikas Yadav and cousin Vishal Yadav are the main accused.

Bharti, daughter of UP politician D P Yadav, had arrived in India on November 23 from London, sources said.

Her arrival preceded a protracted legal wrangle. However, she has not appeared in public so far, keeping the media guessing about her whereabouts.

She had arrived in Mumbai on a Jet Airways flight and was handed over to the immigration authorities, who completed the necessary formalities, as she was travelling on an emergency landing certificate, the sources said.

Bhuttan, however, refused to divulge what transpired between the two. "It's between a client and a lawyer. I cannot say anything on that," he said.

Bharti's testimony in the case is crucial as she had in her statement to police earlier stated that she saw Vishal and Vikas with Nitish before his disappearance. He was later found murdered.

She is set to depose in a court here on Wednesday. According to prosecution, Nitish was killed allegedly by Vikas and Vishal, who were said to have been against her intimacy with him, on February 17, 2002.