New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Wednesday sought the response of the city police to a plea by a former employee of the Ansal family seeking setting aside of his conviction and sentence for tampering with evidence in the 1997 Uphaar cinema fire tragedy case. Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav issued the notice and asked the Delhi Police to respond to the plea by P P Batra.
Batra has already completed his jail term in this case which pertained to the fire incident on June 13, 1997, that left 59 people dead. Besides Batra, 83-year-old Sushil Ansal of the Ansal family that owned the theatre had also approached the high court seeking to set aside his conviction and sentence. On October 11, the high court issued a bailable warrant against Batra as neither he nor any lawyer on his behalf was present in the court during the hearing on the victims' plea to enhance the punishment of the convicts in the evidence tampering case.
A magisterial court had on November 8, 2021, awarded a seven-year jail term to the real estate barons. The District Judge had on July 19 modified the magisterial court's order on the sentence and ordered the release of Sushil and Gopal Ansal, former court staff Dinesh Chandra Sharma and Ansal's then employee Batra against their already undergone jail term.
It imposed a fine of Rs 3 crore each on Sushil and Gopal Ansal, Rs 30,000 on Batra and Rs 60,000 on Sharma. Batra, in his criminal revision petition challenging the trial court's judgement, contended that the order was passed in a mechanical manner, in clear lack of appreciation of both the law and the facts of the instant case.
He said there was not even an iota of evidence to show his complicity in the alleged conspiracy. While upholding the conviction of the Ansal brothers, the trial court had acquitted co-accused Anup Singh. The case is related to tampering with the evidence in the main fire tragedy case in which the Ansals were convicted and sentenced to a two-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 a Rs 30 crore fine each, to be used for building a trauma centre in the national capital. According to the charge sheet, the documents tampered with included a police memo giving details of recoveries immediately after the incident, Delhi Fire Service records pertaining to the repair of the transformer installed inside Uphaar cinema, minutes of Managing Director's meetings, and four cheques.
Out of the six sets of documents, a cheque for Rs 50 lakh, issued by Sushil Ansal to himself, and minutes of the MD's meetings, proved beyond doubt that the two brothers were handling the day-to-day affairs of the theatre at the relevant time, the charge sheet had said. The tampering was detected for the first time on July 20, 2002, and a departmental enquiry was initiated against Dinesh Chandra Sharma. He was suspended and terminated from service on June 25, 2004. (PTI)
