Uphaar Fire Case: Supreme Court Sentences Gopal Ansal To 1-Year Jail Term
The Supreme Court on Thursday found the Ansal brothers, who built and operated Delhi's Uphaar Cinema, guilty of causing death due to negligence and sentenced one of them to jail. The verdict is in connection with the 1997 Uphaar fire tragedy case in which 59 people died.
By a majority verdict of 2:1, the apex court asked the younger of the two Ansal brothers, Gopal Ansal, to surrender within four weeks and serve the remaining jail term of the one-year punishment. The court said Sushil Ansal, the elder of the Ansal brothers, will not be jailed on account of his age.
A fine of Rs 30 crore each, imposed on the two brothers in an earlier Supreme Court verdict in 2015, still holds.
A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, Kurian Joseph and AK Goel delivered the review judgement.
The Ansal brothers owned the Uphaar cinema in New Delhi, where on June 13, 1997, 59 people died from suffocation after a fire broke out during a screening of the film Border. More than a hundred people were seriously injured in the incident.
Thursday's judgement was delivered following pleas of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Association of the Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT), seeking a review of the 2015 verdict in the case. The Supreme Court had then ruled that the Ansals would not be jailed though the charges against them merited a two-year term; instead, they were fined Rs 30 crore each. The apex court has said at the time that they had spent a few months in prison after being convicted by a lower court and because of that, and their age, they would not be imprisoned again.
The campaign against the Ansal brothers has been led by Neelam Krishnamurthy, convener of the AVUT, who also lost her children in the incident. After Thursday's judgement, Krishnamurthy said she has lost faith in the judiciary.
If this is the kind of judgement somebody is going to get after killing 59 people, I think its not worth coming to the court. It is a futile exercise. The only thing the court has proved today is that rich and powerful have some special rights that we are unaware ofNeelam Krishnamurthy, Convenor, AVUT
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