Uphaar fire: Court may pronounce order today in case of tampering of evidence
A Delhi court will today pronounce its order in a case related to tampering of evidence in the 1997 Uphaar fire case involving real estate businessmen Sushil and Gopal Ansal.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma on Thursday reserved the verdict after the final arguments in the matter were completed.
The case pertains to tampering of evidence in the main case of the fire tragedy that claimed 59 lives, in which Ansal was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison by the Supreme Court.
However, the top court has already jailed them on the condition that they pay a fine of Rs 30 crore to be used for the construction of a trauma center in the national capital.
The Ansal brothers, along with Dinesh Chand Sharma, an employee of the court, and other persons – PP Batra, Har Swaroop Panwar, Anoop Singh and Dharamveer Malhotra – were booked in the present case.
Panwar and Malhotra died during the trial.
Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa, appearing for the complainant Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT), told the court on Thursday that Ansal and HS Panwar had hatched a criminal conspiracy to destroy the most important evidence collected by the CBI against them. The main case of the gift.
“The documents were hand picked and tampered with, mutilated, torn and some even disappeared,” he told the court.
The prosecution claimed that Ansal was prosecuted in the main case and documents that were “mutilated, destroyed or illegally removed”, reveal his involvement in the day-to-day functioning of Uphaar Cinema.
It said that Ansal had defended in the main case that he had no involvement in the day-to-day working of Uphaar Cinema.
Molestation was first detected on 20 July 2002 and when it was exposed, a departmental inquiry was initiated against Dinesh Chand Sharma and he was suspended.
A subsequent inquiry was conducted and he was dismissed from services on June 25, 2004.
The prosecution said that after the dismissal, the Ansal brothers helped Sharma in getting employment at a monthly salary of Rs 15,000.
When the case was registered, the company’s documents, where Sharma was appointed after his suspension, were further tampered with by its chairman, Anoop Singh.
The Delhi Police had earlier told the court that tampering of evidence by real estate dealers has undermined the trust and confidence of a common man in the criminal justice system.
It said that the Uphaar cinema fire was the most sensitive matter in the city at that time and as such tampering of documents cannot be taken lightly.
According to the charge sheet, the allegedly tampered with documents include a police memorandum detailing the recovery immediately after the incident, Delhi Fire Service records relating to repair of transformer installed inside Uphaar, minutes of meetings of the managing director and four checks. Are included.
Of the six sets of documents, a check for Rs 50 lakh issued by Sushil Ansal to himself, and the minutes of the MD’s meetings, undoubtedly proved that the two brothers were handling the day-to-day affairs of the theatre. relevant time, the charge sheet said.
On June 13, 1997, during the screening of the Hindi film ‘Border’, a fire broke out at Uphaar Cinema, in which 59 people lost their lives.
The case was registered on the directions of the Delhi High Court while hearing a petition by AVUT chairperson Neelam Krishnamurthy.
The accused have been charged with offenses under IPC sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 109 (abetment), 201 (deleting evidence of offence) and 409 (criminal breach of trust).
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