Uphaar:AVUT chief seeks time on plea of men who threatened her

The chairperson of the Association of the Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) today sought a month's time from a Delhi court to decide if she wished to forgive two men who had threatened her in 2007.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Dass posted the matter for July 1 after AVUT chairperson Neelam Krishnamoorthy said she needed time to seek legal opinion before taking a decision on the plea.
The accused -- Praveen Shankar Sharma and Deepak Kathpalia -- had tendered an "unconditional apology" to her before the court on May 27.
Krishnamoorthy, who lost two minor children in a fire that broke out in the Uphaar cinema hall here in 1997, had claimed in a complaint she and her husband were harassed by the accused in the Patiala House court on May 10, 2007.

Kathpalia and Sharma, then employed by the owners of the hall, had passed lewd remarks against her and clicked her photographs, she had said in a complaint filed soon after the incident.
The trial court hearing the fire case had earlier taken cognisance of the offence against four accused, including real estate barons Sushil and Gopal Ansal, under relevant penal provisions.

However, later the high court stayed the case against the Ansals, and then quashed it.
On February 9, the Supreme Court in the curative petition had sentenced Gopal Ansal to jail for a year in connection with the fire. However, the bench had spared 77-year-old Sushil Ansal because of his age. It had also upheld a fine of Rs 30 crore imposed on each of them and said the money should be utilised to set up a trauma centre.

Following this, Gopal Ansal had approached the Supreme Court seeking modification of its order on grounds of parity, saying he was 69 years old and that his health would suffer "irreparable damage" if he was jailed.
It was dismissed and Gopal Ansal surrendered before the authorities at the Tihar Jail on March 20.
Fifty-nine people, trapped in the balcony of the theatre in South Delhi, had died in the blaze of June 13, 2017, and over 100 people were injured in the stampede that followed during the screening of the Bollywood film, 'Border'.