New Delhi: The Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) urged a Delhi court on Tuesday to award life imprisonment to real estate barons Sushil and Gopal Ansal and others for tampering with evidence in the 1997 cinema fire case that had claimed 59 lives.
The court had on October 8 convicted the Ansals, a former court staff Dinesh Chand Sharma and individuals P P Batra and Anoop Singh in the case.
Two other accused, Har Swaroop Panwar and Dharamvir Malhotra, died during the course of the trial.
The case was lodged on the direction of the Delhi High Court while hearing a petition by AVUT chairperson Neelam Krishnamoorthy.
The case is related to tampering with the evidence in the main fire tragedy case in which 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.
Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa, appearing for AVUT, urged Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma to award maximum punishment to the convicts, claiming that “the case is far more serious as it manifests the audacity and the arrogance of rich people of the society, who feel that they are beyond the reach of law and can get away after committing serious offences, resulting in the death of 59 people”.
He added that the accused in this case, primarily the Ansal brothers, misused the liberty granted to them in the main Uphaar case and tampered with the evidence after hatching criminal conspiracy with the court staff.
While refuting Ansals' argument that they have already paid Rs 30 crore fine each, Pahwa said the fine was paid to the State, not the victims.
Besides, it was paid in the main case of fire tragedy and the present case was a separate matter related to the tempering with the evidence, he said.
Pahwa further stated that Ansals and Panwar hatched a criminal conspiracy of the destruction of the most vital piece of evidence collected by the CBI against them in the main Uphaar case.
The documents were handpicked and were tampered with, mutilated, torn and some also went missing, he told the court.
The prosecution claimed the Ansals were prosecuted in the main case and the documents which were mutilated, destroyed or illegally removed, manifested their involvement in the day-to-day functioning of the Uphaar Cinema.
It said the Ansals had taken the defence in the main case that they had no involvement in the day-to-day functioning of Uphaar Cinema.
The tampering was detected for the first time on July 20, 2002, and when it was unearthed, a departmental enquiry was initiated against Dinesh Chand 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.
According to the charge sheet, the documents alleged to have been tampered with included a police memo giving details of recoveries immediately after the incident, Delhi Fire Service records pertaining to repair of transformer installed inside Uphaar, minutes of Managing Director's meetings, and four cheques.
Out of the six sets of documents, a cheque of Rs 50 lakh, issued by Sushil Ansal to self, 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 fire had broken out at the Uphaar cinema during the screening of the Hindi film 'Border' on June 13, 1997, claiming 59 lives.
PTI
