© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Ajay Katara only has to close his eyes to remember that night from 22 years ago. A little past midnight, on February 17, 2002, the fog hung low as his scooter went down the largely deserted stretch of Hapur Road that connects Ghaziabad to Delhi. He was on his way home to Shahdara after attending a friend’s daughter’s birthday party in Govindpuram, near Ghaziabad. Merely 2 km from his friend’s house, near the Hapur toll booth, an SUV hit his scooter from behind, throwing him to the ground. It was a minor hit, but it left Ajay shaken and angry. He dusted himself off and walked up to the driver’s side of the SUV, itching for a fight. What he saw next would alter his life forever.
In the passenger seat was a man in a red kurta and a white stole. Hours later, the man, 23-year-old Nitish Katara, would end up dead. And Ajay would go on to become a prime witness in the murder case.
In the car with Nitish that day were Vikas Yadav, son of D P Yadav, a strongman-politician who has been in several parties, including the Samajwadi Party and BSP; Vikas’s cousin Vishal Yadav; and their associate Sukhdev Pehalwan. The trio had allegedly abducted Nitish from his classmate’s wedding in Ghaziabad, killing him hours later. The Yadav family was reportedly irked by Nitish’s relationship with D P Yadav’s daughter Bharti. Hours later, Nitish’s burnt body was found near Hapur, in Bulandshahr’s Khurja village, not far from where Ajay had met with the accident.
By a seemingly twisted coincidence, Ajay and the dead stranger shared the same surname. It was a twist of fate that has defined Ajay and determined how he would lead the rest of his life.
In the years that followed, 37 cases were slapped on Ajay, including two of rape, one under the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences Act, and multiple cases of cheating, extortion, and forgery. Over the years, courts have dismissed the charges in 35 of the 37 cases against him. The Allahabad High Court stayed proceedings in the remaining two cases — one filed by D P Yadav against Ajay for allegedly insulting him over a phone call in 2009 and the other, a fraud case registered against him in 2018 — until the petitioners provided sufficient evidence for the court to proceed with the cases.
Last month, the Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into what it said was a fraud played on it by some advocates and others who filed a fake petition, allegedly to implicate Ajay in a criminal case.
Rattling off dates, FIR numbers and the status of each case, Ajay claims that there have been at least 10 attempts made on his life — including an alleged case of poisoning and multiple instances of shooting. “Four of these cases are still pending in courts,” he says.
While the accident in the early hours of February 17, 2002 — and the events that followed — “wrecked his life”, Ajay believes that he was perhaps ordained to be there, at the spot, that night.
“I was reluctant to attend the birthday party that day. It was too cold at night and I really didn’t want to go back home on a scooter, but my friend called me twice in the evening, insisting I attend. God works in mysterious ways,” says Ajay, 51, who then worked as a small-time gemstone supplier to jewellery shops. He now runs a plant nursery and is the co-owner of a wholesale tyre business.
On October 3, 2016, the Supreme Court sentenced Vikas and Vishal Yadav, as well as Sukhdev Pehelwan, the third accused, to 25 years of imprisonment without remission.
In his testimonies in court, Ajay has insisted that when he walked up to the SUV that knocked him down, he instantly recognised the occupants — all of them, except the man sitting in the passenger seat in front, Nitish. The driver, as it would turn out later, was Vikas Yadav. “Everyone knew D P Yadav and his son Vikas,” says Ajay.
D P Yadav’s reputation preceded him. From UP’s Bulandshahr to Haryana’s Sirsa, he had a string of cases pending against him. According to his 2014 Lok Sabha election affidavit, he has several criminal cases against him, including of murder, attempt-to-murder and extortion.
D P Yadav’s son Vikas was, by then, already embroiled in the 1999 Jessica Lal murder case. A friend of the main convict, Manu Sharma, Vikas was in 2006 sentenced to four years of rigorous imprisonment in the case.
Standing near the Hapur toll plaza on that chilly February night in 2002, Ajay instinctively realised that he would not win this fight. He moved his scooter out of the car’s way and let it pass.
Three days later, TV channels beamed news of a murder in Bulandshahr – a man’s body had been found on Shikarpur Road. Ajay watched as the man’s mother declared on national television that she knew her son’s killers. Then, the dead man’s photo came up on screen and Ajay felt a knot in his stomach – he recognised the man.
“It was the same man I saw near Hapur, sitting beside Vikas Yadav that day. In the photo, he wore that same red kurta and white stole that I had seen him in,” says Ajay.
Ajay says it took him almost over a week to summon the courage to go to the police. He went to the Kavi Nagar police station, where, he claims, the Station House Officer (SHO) didn’t hear him out. “He was probably scared. When I told him that I had seen the four of them near the Hapur toll plaza that night, he didn’t believe me,” he says.
Ajay says the police ultimately had to take his account seriously since he had provided them the most crucial piece of evidence — that Nitish was seen with the accused minutes before he was found dead. “I gave the police the licence plate number,” he says.
In August 2002, the trial in the Nitish Katara murder case started in the Patiala House courts. On May 31 the following year, Ajay stood up in court to narrate what he saw on that February night in 2002. That’s when his troubles began.
In March 2003, nearly two months before his court appearance, Ajay says, an acquaintance called him to Lucknow to discuss something “that would benefit me greatly”.
“As we engaged in small talk, D P Yadav walked into the room. I realised I had been trapped into negotiating with him. He told me to turn into a hostile witness. When I refused, my acquaintance, who was still in the room, said, ‘Do you want to see your family dead?’,” he says, adding that D P Yadav allegedly offered him money to stay quiet. “I had read the room. I knew I was in danger. So I told him I won’t give my testimony, but refused to take the money,” Ajay claims.
Yet, he reached the courtroom and gave his testimony. In the years that followed, a series of cases were slapped on Ajay, all of which, he alleges, were filed at D P Yadav’s behest.
The first case against Ajay was filed in September 2003, soon after his first testimony in court, allegedly by a relative of D P Yadav. “According to this person, Saroj, I had misbehaved with her and torn her clothes during an argument in Ghaziabad…I was in Haridwar at that time,” he says, insisting that he had never met or heard of Saroj before the case was filed against him.
When he returned to Ghaziabad to handle the matter, Ajay claims that D P Yadav allegedly sent goons to the police station to intimidate him. A security detail was put in place for Ajay’s safety, which has remained with him for the last 22 years.
When The Indian Express reached out to D P Yadav, he denied having registered any case against him. “I have not said or written a single word against him. I can give it to you in writing…I can give you an affidavit saying we haven’t said or done anything against him.”
When asked about the attempts on Katara’s life, Yadav said, “Why would I do that? Katara is a fraud who likes to flaunt his gunmen around and earn his money through illegal means. He’s saying all these lies to keep his security detail with him.”
However, while dismissing the cases against Ajay, judges have in successive orders taken note of the harassment he has had to face. In one such case hearing in 2024, the court reiterated an order from 2015, where it observed, “The only public witness Ajay Katara, who could not be influenced and stood by his statement, has needed court orders for police protection and is being subjected to multiple criminal complaints by relatives of the appellants or persons associated to them. The fact that all these complaints and cases arose only after he surfaced before the police speaks for itself.”
In 2019, during the hearing of a case in which Ajay was accused of raping a minor in 2014, the court observed, “The malafide behind the allegations against the applicant is writ large in view of factual backdrop of the status of applicant, his admitted enmity with Vikas Yadav and Vishal Yadav… the history of his false implication in as many as twenty four (24) criminal cases, wherein either final report was submitted by the local police in favour of applicant or the case resulted in acquittal, or the proceedings have been stayed by the High Court.”
Despite the drama in his life, Ajay says he yearned for a “normal” life. In 2005, then 32 years old, he married a girl from Ghaziabad, but the marriage ended in a divorce and a case against Ajay under IPC Sections related to dowry and mental abuse.
In 2008, the Allahabad High Court disposed of the dowry case against Ajay after the police filed a cancellation report in February 2007 – despite multiple summons, the woman and her lawyers had failed to appear in court.
Between 2007 and 2009, Ajay claims he faced multiple attempts on his life: in June 2007, he was allegedly shot at in Meerut while he was there for work; and in November 2007, he was kidnapped and flung from a high-speed car.
In 2013, a POCSO case was filed against Ajay after he accused of kidnapping and raping a 12-year-old girl from Badaun. The case would stretch on for nearly a decade despite being disposed of by the Allahabad High Court on December 16, 2019. On April 2 this year, the High Court dismissed an application seeking revision of its 2019 judgment. It was in this case that two special leave petitions were filed in the Supreme Court, allegedly to implicate Katara, after which the apex court on September 20 ordered a CBI probe.
In 2013, a woman accused Ajay of raping her in a hotel near Mehrauli. “Once again, I was informed of the case through TV news channels. I was in Andamans this time,” he says. The closure report was filed the following year.
Even for someone who had faced a barrage of cases, the rape cases, he says, broke him completely. “I fell into deep depression and lost a lot of weight. I couldn’t even get out of bed. I contemplated suicide. That was the only time I wondered if I would have been better off just giving in,” says Ajay.
Why then had he preserved for 22 long years? “He (Nitish) was a Katara like me. How could I have let down another Katara?”
Talking of how Ajay’s testimony was crucial to the case, his counsel Pradeep Kumar Dey told The Indian Express, “His was the last seen evidence and in the court of law, that comes under circumstantial evidence, which is considered very important. The court can convict the person based on that along with some other material.”
The two-decade fight has come at a heavy price for Ajay. For one, he is deeply distrustful of people. “I have very few friends,” he says, adding, “I don’t reveal my plan in advance to even my security team. Who knows who will say what to whom?”
Growing increasingly paranoid for his safety, in 2019, Ajay rented a house in Shahdara for a while. “At least my family would be safe if I stayed away from them,” he explains. He ensured that the house was on the top floor, had at least two exits in case he had to escape, and was located at the end of a narrow gully so not a lot of men could easily make their way into the house.
Even today, his house in Ghaziabad faces the main gate of his housing complex. “I always, always ensure that my house has more than one exit,” he says. Throughout his conversation with The Indian Express, he insisted on sitting facing the main gate of his house.
Ajay says the attempts on his life and the false cases have over the years come down and he has settled into “somewhat of a routine”. While four days of the week are set aside for court appearances, he spends the rest of his time “catching up on whatever is left of life”.
He has since remarried and has a son. And yet, Ajay rarely goes out with his family. “I have been married for 14 years now, but I haven’t ever gone out to watch a film with my wife and son,” he says.
Katara recalls how in 2020, his wife and son, then six years old, were injured after a car rammed into their scooter. I used to be worried my son would be attacked in school…But I have learnt to loosen up a bit now… Now, a policeman accompanies my son to the bus stop,” he says.
When his wife ventures outside to buy vegetables, it’s with the security detail in tow.
“Dum ghut ta hai… Par andhera ko mitane ke liye deepak ko jalna padta hai na? (It’s suffocating… But a lamp needs to burn to emit light),” he says.
