After an arduous and prolonged fight of 19 years the verdict on the Uphaar Cinema Fire Tragedy case of 1997 is finally out! The accused Gopal Ansal and Sunil Ansal of the Ansal API fame have been awarded a soft one year imprisonment of which Gopal Ansal has been asked to serve the remaining 7 months and Sushil Ansal’s sentence has been reduced to the time already served, considering his old age. They were fined Rs.30crore each perhaps a bargain to shorten the jail terms where the money will be used to set up a Uphaar victims Trauma Center that will be the Delhi government’s responsibility.
The Uphaar tragedy that took 59 lives and injured more than 100 people during the screening of the Bollywood movie Border was not just any other fire accident but a classic case of gross violation of building norms, the onus of which lay largely on the Ansal barons directly.
The fire from the transformer that engulfed the basement car parking that fateful day on 13 June 1997, burning all 36 cars when the basement was meant for only 19 cars, the poisonous smoke emanating from the fire entered the cinema hall asphyxiating the crowds where there were no emergency illuminators leading to a stampede, there was no public announcement system when the people were left in the dark clueless about what was happening and the owner had blocked and tapered the gangways(large exits for emergency purpose) and fire exits by illegally adding extra rows of seats for additional revenue generation thereby flouting all safety rules. Also, the electrical problem was detected in the morning but the shoddy service coupled with lack of respect for ordinary lives had led to this tragedy.
The Krishnamoorthis who lost both their children in the Uphaar Tragedy had taken upon themselves to drive the case to its logical end and seek justice for all the aggrieved. But the judgement has left them shocked and disappointed, Mrs. Krishnamoorthi expressed that it was a waste of time that she attended the court sessions all these years when even if she had chosen to pick up a gun and shoot the accused, she would have been let off in 14years!
It might seem like an anguished response but certainly there is more truth to the unending trauma as justice delayed is definitely justice denied.
Bargaining the tenure of punishment with acute penalties would perhaps be ideal in a financial fraud and would be apt if applied on all politicians who have swindled public money but definitely not in matters of rape, murder or corrupt practices leading to death and destruction of public property. But paradoxical are the ways of our judicial systems where the legal recourse is like a cue stick for the rich and a cudgel to the poor where money and power can ensure a safe sustainable workaround while faith and forbearance are left knocking from door to door. Be it the 1984 Sikh riots case or the Bhopal gas leak case or the recent 2G case or the Sunanda Pushkar case or the many deaths of honest IAS/IPS/police inspectors or the Salman Khan case or the Upahaar Cinema case itself for that matter, it has been a completely normalized scenario where the opulent convicts remain cushy beneath caressing kid gloves while the commoners and the politically irrelevant are skimmed and shredded under the magnifying gaze of the powerful and the supreme where rule books are meant and applicable only for common cattle class perhaps!
It is a hypocrite world out there where tall stalwarts with legal expertise charging lakhs and even crores as their legal fees have always defended the most corrupt and the obnoxiously powerful while the commoners who question this farce will be slapped with a contempt notice! This time around luckily the convicts did not flee the country like Warren Anderson or Vijay Mallya, not that the Ansals could not have made it, they already own a 50crore worth property in the tallest towers of London and have several crores worth of properties and businesses spread across just like the several FIRs surrounding them(Read this Tehelka report for further details about the Ansals)
But like Sunny Deol says ‘Tarik pe Tarik’ Tarik pe Tarik’ the delay mechanism might have always served as a time-tested antidote to guard the guilty as long as possible to get away from the minds of the masses and to get away unscathed as much as possible from the otherwise long hands of the law and we the peeved and puny people can only fret that the well-heeled never get to cool their heels.
But what is important is the fact that the courage and conviction of ordinary people have shaken even the most powerful and forced them to kneel down even if it were for a short period. And it is because of the likes of Neelam Katarias and Krishnamoorthis who dared to challenge the system and vehemently seek justice rising up against all odds even in times of their personal miseries is what inspires many of us to still believe in voicing out the truth and this trend should continue and encourage more and more honest and upright people to pursue law and call out what is corrupt and call it out loudly so that corruption is never normalized.