The Hindu : New Delhi News : Ansals charge-sheeted for tampering with Uphaar fire tragedy case documents

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Ansals charge-sheeted for tampering with Uphaar fire tragedy case documents

Staff Reporter

CHARGE-SHEETED: Uphaar cinema owners Sushil Ansal and Gopal Ansal.

NEW DELHI: Uphaar cinema owners Sushil Ansal and Gopal Ansal along with four others have been charge-sheeted by the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi police for allegedly removing, tampering and mutilating important documents of the Uphaar fire tragedy case in conspiracy with a clerk of a trial court here back in 2003.

The investigating agency filed the charge-sheet under Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence or giving false information to screen offenders) and 409 (criminal breach of trust) of the Indian Penal Code.

The other four accused who have been charge-sheeted are H. S. Panwar, Prem Prakash Batra, D. V. Malhotra and Anoop Singh. The Economic Offences Wing had already charge-sheeted Dinesh Chandra Sharma, clerk in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Mamata Sahagal, who had convicted the two Ansal brothers last year along with Panwar and others in the Uphaar fire tragedy case.

The charge-sheet said that court clerk Sharma was the henchman of the Ansals. They had entered into a conspiracy with him for tampering with evidence. The charge was prima facie made out against the Ansals on the ground that Prem Prakash Batra, an employee of the cinema hall owners, had got the clerk a job following his dismissal from court service at twice the normal salary in A-Plus Security Agency which also provided security services to a company under the control of the Ansals, the charge-sheet said.

Sushil Ansal also provided a job to accused H. S. Panwar, a former Delhi Fire Service employee, in his company, Sushant Estate, after Panwar’s retirement.

“Evidence has come on record to prove that accused Panwar has committed serious acts of commission and omission during his service by rendering services to the Ansals,” the charge-sheet said. The Economic Offences Wing had registered the case in 2006 on a Delhi High Court direction following a petition by Association of the Victims of Uphaar Tragedy convener Neelam Krishnamurthy.

The removal and tampering of the papers came to light when the public prosecutor in the case noticed that several important documents filed along with the charge-sheet were missing from the court record of the case or had been tampered with or mutilated by tearing off certain portions or sprinkling ink on them.

The prosecutor had brought this to the notice of the court, which ordered an inquiry into the matter and also later ordered dismissal of the clerk on the basis of the probe report.

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