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High Court issues notices to Ansal brothers

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued notices to Sushil Ansal and Gopal Ansal, owners of Uphaar cinema hall, and three others convicted in the fire tragedy case of June 1997. As many as 59 cinemagoers had lost their lives in the massive fire that engulfed the cinema hall on June 13, 1997, while watching the matinee show of the Hindi movie “Border.”

Justice H.R. Malhotra issued the notices on a petition by the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) seeking enhancement of the two years’ rigorous imprisonment sentence awarded to the Ansal brothers and the three other convicts by a trial court here in November last year. The Court asked them to file their replies by January 22, the next date of hearing.

The Association sought their conviction under Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which provides for life imprisonment or imprisonment for ten years and fine.

“The reading of the trial court judgment in the case pronounced last November and the evidence adduced during the trial conclusively establishes that the convicts had ample knowledge that their acts of omission and commission were likely to cause death to patrons visiting the cinema, and as such the ingredients of the offence under Section 304 stand satisfied in the instant case,” the Association submitted in its revision petition challenging the judgment. The three other convicts are Har Swarup Panwar, Shyam Sunder Sharma and Narayan Dutt Tiwari.

The petitioner further said that the trial court ought to have invoked Section 304 against all the accused and then tried them in accordance with the law.

The evidence on record also revealed that the accused respondents had the requisite knowledge that their acts were likely to cause death to the visitors sitting in the balcony in general and those sitting on the right of it in particular, the petition stated. The Association had also urged the trial court that the accused be tried under Section 304. But it had rejected its plea.

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