NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice to Delhi Police seeking its response on a plea of Gopal Ansal seeking to set aside his conviction and sentence for tampering with evidence in the case related to Uphaar cinema fire tragedy. The matter was listed for further hearing on December 13. The fire had broken out at the Uphaar cinema during the screening of the movie ‘Border’ in June 1997 which had claimed 59 lives.
Besides him, 83-year-old Sushil Ansal and their former employee P P Batra had also approached the high court seeking to set aside their conviction and sentence. The victims’ families, under the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT), have been seeking enhancement of the punishment awarded to the convicts in the evidence tampering case.
Gopal Ansal, in his revision petition before the high court, contended that the findings arrived at by the magisterial court and sessions court are ‘totally perverse’ and against the settled proposition of law and criminal jurisprudence. A magisterial court had on November 8, 2021, awarded seven-year jail terms to the real estate barons. The District Judge had on July 19 modified the magisterial court’s order on 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 since November 8, 2021. It had imposed a fine of Rs 3 crore on Sushil and Gopal Ansal each and Rs 30,000 on Batra and Rs 60,000 on Sharma.
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 2-year jail term by the SC. The apex court, however, released them taking into account the prison time they had done on the condition that they pay a `30 crore fine each, to be used for building a trauma centre in the national capital.
‘Findings by magisterial court are perverse’
Gopal Ansal, in his revision petition before the HC, said that the findings arrived at by the magisterial and sessions courts are ‘totally perverse’ and against the settled proposition of law and criminal jurisprudence. A magisterial court had awarded 7-year jail terms to them in 2021.