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Uphaar fire: Court dismisses Ansals' plea to suspend their jail term

A Delhi court on Friday dismissed pleas of real estate barons Sushil and Gopal Ansal seeking to suspend their seven-year jail terms awarded for tampering with evidence

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Press Trust of India New Delhi


A Delhi court on Friday dismissed pleas of real estate barons Sushil and Gopal Ansal seeking to suspend their seven-year jail terms awarded for tampering with evidence in the 1997 case of Uphaar cinema fire which had claimed 59 lives.

Additional Sessions Judge Anil Antil denied Ansals' plea to suspend their conviction and jail term by a magisterial court and refused to release the convicts on bail.

The judge said that the case was one of the gravest of its kind and the offence appeared to be the outcome of a calculated design on the part of the convicts to interfere with the course of justice.

 

The court also refused to suspend the seven-year jail term each to former court staff Dinesh Chand Sharma and two others -- P P Batra and Anoop Singh -- in the case and release them on bail.

Besides challenging their conviction and punishment, the convicts had urged the sessions court to suspend their jail terms till the appeal is decided.

The polluters of the judicial firmament are required to be shown no leniency to maintain the sublimity of the institution, and recourse faith in general public in the administration of justice, the judge said.

He added that any interference in the course of justice, any obstruction caused in the path of those seeking justice is an affront to the majesty of law and needs to be viewed seriously.

Nextly, it is also not the case that the appellants have suffered a long incarceration or appeal is not likely to be heard in near future, the court said.

The court said that in so far as the question of hearing of the appeals in nearby future was concerned, the same can well be taken care of by expediting the final arguments on merits and the convenient date can be given, in light of other pendency and scheduled workloads of the court, and the counsels can also conclude their arguments within a time frame.

I must also state that age by itself can not be the sole criteria to grant relief to the convicts/appellants herein, more so, when the appellants themselves were involved in the procrastinated trial of the case. They can not be permitted to take benefit of their own wrongs, the judge said.

On the other hand, inordinate delay in the trial of the case also does cause acute suffering and anguish to the victims of the offence, and the rights of the victims can not by any yardstick be subservient to the rights of the convicts, he said.

The court also noted that the medical status of Ansals was also called from the concerned jail superintendent/medical officer and in terms of the status report filed therein the general condition of the appellants is stable.

The nature of the crime is such that it strikes at the very edifice of functioning of the court. A finding of guilt has already been given by the trial court. Thus the presumption of innocence that attaches to the accused during the trial of the case does not apply at the stage of consideration of suspension of sentence, whereby the appellants/accused persons stands guilty by the court concerned, the court said.

The court added that suspending sentences at this stage was not only be against the established principles of criminal law but shaking the confidence of the general public in the judicial system.

It is trite to say that if the judiciary as an institution began to lose the confidence of the public our cherished value of democracy shall come under serious threat, it said.

The court will further hear the arguments on the merit of the appeals on February 23.

Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa, appearing for the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT), had opposed the appeals and told the court that the offence of tampering was extremely serious, as it affects the entire criminal justice system.

The Delhi police had also opposed the appeals field by Ansals and told the sessions court that it will trigger the mental trauma and agony of the victims.

Additional public prosecutor A T Ansari, appearing for the agency, told the court that the punishment provided solace to the victims of the tragedy and reinforced their faith in the justice delivery system that too after 24 years.

The case is related to tampering with the evidence in the main fire tragedy case, which had claimed 59 lives.

In the main case, the Ansals were convicted and sentenced to 2-year jail term by the Supreme Court.

The apex court however released them taking into account the prison time they had done on the condition that they pay Rs 30 crore fine each, to be used for building a trauma centre in the national capital.

The magisterial court in the tampering case also awarded a 7-year-jail term each to Sharma, Batra, and Singh and a fine of Rs three lakh each on them.

The court had also imposed a fine of Rs 2.25 crore each on the Ansals.

The tampering was detected for the first time on July 20, 2002, and when it was unearthed, a departmental enquiry was initiated against Sharma and he was suspended.

Later an enquiry was conducted and he was terminated from services on June 25, 2004.

The prosecution said that after the termination, the Ansal brothers helped Sharma get employment on a monthly salary of Rs 15,000.

When the case was registered, the documents of the company, where Sharma was employed post suspension, were further tampered with by its chairperson Anoop Singh.

The fire had broken out at the Uphaar cinema during the screening of the Hindi film 'Border' on June 13, 1997, claiming 59 lives.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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First Published: Dec 03 2021 | 10:36 PM IST

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