New Delhi:
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought the response of real estate magnates Sushil and Gopal Ansal to a plea from the Delhi police for an increased sentence for allegedly tampering with evidence in the 1997 Uphaar cinema fire, which claimed 59 lives.
Police have challenged the July 19, 2022 court order to release the Ansal brothers. Their sentence of about eight months was offset against the period they had already spent in prison.
Judge AJ Bhambhani has notified the Ansals, former court staff Dinesh Chand Sharma and PP Batra, former associate of the Ansal, and asked them to submit responses to the police’s petition.
It has also asked the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) to file the reply and set the case for further hearing on April 13, when other related petitions are listed.
The judge also condoned the delay by the Delhi Police in filing the review request saying “I will approve the delay in a case like this”.
“The state has taken some time to come, but now we are here. There is a short delay in filing the review application. It is a bureaucratic delay,” said senior lawyer Dayan Krishnan, who represented the state.
While AVUT has already filed a petition to improve sentencing for the convicts, the Ansals, Sharma and Batra have filed separate pleas to have their convictions overturned in the case. The Supreme Court had previously issued statements on all petitions.
In its plea to the Supreme Court, the police said the sentence reduction order was wholly unreasonable and deserved to be overruled because it was not supported by any justification.
“The trial judge in the contested sentencing order ignored the comments of the Supreme Court and the High Court regarding the serious and heinous nature of a crime involving the manipulation of judicial records. the crimes,” it said.
Police claimed the conviction has eroded public confidence in the criminal justice system and created the impression that those who abuse the process will not be visited by the consequences.
“The sentencing has rewarded dishonesty and rewarded the convicts for having left no stone unturned in delaying the impending prosecution…,” the plea said.
The police have requested that the verdict of 8 November 2021 issued by the magisterial court that had sentenced the convicts to seven years’ imprisonment be reinstated.
A magistrate had sentenced the real estate lords to seven years in prison on November 8, 2021 and they have been in prison ever since.
The District Judge had on July 19, 2022 amended the verdict of the Magisterial Court and ordered the release of the Ansals, former court staff Dinesh Chand Sharma and Ansal’s then employee PP Batra by the time they had been in prison since November 8. had been in prison. 2021.
However, it had attached the fine of Rs 2.25 crore each imposed by the magisterial court on Sushil and Gopal Ansal and Rs 3 lakh each on the other two.
Although the court upheld the Ansal brothers’ conviction, the court acquitted co-defendant Anup Singh.
The case is related to alleged evidence tampering in the main fire tragedy in which the Ansals were sentenced to 2 years in prison by the Supreme Court.
However, the Supreme Court released them considering the jail term they had served on the condition that they each pay a fine of Rs 30 crore to be used for the construction of a trauma center in the national capital.
According to the indictment form, the documents tampered with include a police memo detailing the recoveries immediately after the incident, records from the Delhi fire service regarding the repair of the transformer installed in Uphaar, minutes of the director’s meetings and four checks.
Among the six sets of documents, a check for Rs 50 lakh issued by Sushil Ansal to himself and minutes of the MD meetings proved beyond any doubt that the two brothers handled the day-to-day running of the theater at the respective location. time, the indictment had said.
The tampering was first discovered on July 20, 2002 and a departmental inquiry was opened against Dinesh Chand Sharma. He was suspended and fired on June 25, 2004.
During the screening of the Hindi film ‘Border’ on 13 June 1997, a massive fire had broken out at the Uphaar cinema, killing 59 people.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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