The Big Story: Curtains on Uphaar

Eighteen years after a fire in Delhi’s Uphaar Cinema killed 59 people, the Supreme Court has reviewed its judgment against the owners of the movie hall. Sixty nine-year-old Gopal Ansal has been sentenced to a year in jail. Since he has already done time for four months, he will have to spend a few months more in prison. His elder brother, 77-year-old Sushil Ansal, was spared jail time because of his age. As with previous judgments in the Uphaar case, the court’s clemency towards the affluent Ansals has been questioned.

Most victims of the Uphaar tragedy died of asphyxiation as the doors had been bolted to make space for extra seats. The Ansals knew this, and in the aftermath of the tragedy, they were charged with criminal negligence. Over the next 18 years, however, they got a series of reprieves from the courts. In 2008, the Delhi High Court halved the two-year sentence already handed to the Ansal brothers. In 2014, a split bench of the Supreme Court upheld the verdict. A year later, the court ruled that the brothers would have to pay Rs 30 crore each as a fine but neither would go to jail: Sushil Ansal was too old and Gopal Ansal would have to be let off on the principle of parity. But both men were in their middle age when the case started. According to the Association of the Victims of Uphaar Tragedy, the delays were caused by the defendants, who had repeatedly asked for adjournments. The courts’ concern with age has also been considered rather whimsical, changing on a case to case basis.

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The Uphaar tragedy also demonstrates the difficulty of getting justice or reparation in cases of man made disaster in India. In the Bhopal gas tragedy, the country’s worst industrial disaster, which left thousands dead, seven men were sentenced to two years in prison in 2010, over 25 years after the incident. All had been charged with causing death due to negligence but were granted bail, pending appeal. The compensation handed out is believed to have left out 93% of the victims and was an amount too paltry to cover the crippling medical expenses of those who survived. In Kolkata, a fire at the AMRI Hospital in 2011 left 89 dead, most of them patients. It has taken the courts five years to frame charges and sentences remain a distant prospect. All these cases bear striking similarities: they were all major disasters that made the headlines nationwide, those held responsible were rich and powerful individuals, and, somewhere down the line, the question of criminal culpability seemed to get lost in the detail.

The Big Scroll

This article raises the question of how the courts decide who is too old to go to jail.

Political pickings

  1. In a notification issued on Wednesday, the Centre has made the Aadhaar card mandatory for those availing benefits under the National Food Security Act.
  2. In Tamil Nadu, VK Sasikala has staked her claim to form government while acting Chief Minister O Panneerselvam has sought more time.
  3. In Dadri, in the run up to the Uttar Pradesh elections, the member of the legislative assembly from the Bahujan Samaj Party skirts around the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in 2015. Rival candidates from the Bhartiya Janata Party rail against the arrests made in the case.
  4. Pakistan says Indian has a secret nuclear weapons programme. The ministry of external affairs has rejected the claim.

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, Rahul Verma and Pranav Gupta argue that the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh need to look beyond social engineering to get votes, perhaps focus on Mayawati’s image as an efficient administrator.
  2. In the Hindu, Arjun Jayadev points out that the Trans-Pacific Partnership might have been dead long before United States President Donald Trump vetoed it, but its damaging provisions have migrated to other treaties.
  3. In LiveMint, Dipti Jain says that discussions on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme must go beyond budgetary allocations.

Giggles

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Aarefa Johari looks at an Amnesty report which says that even after three years, rape vitims from the Muzaffarnagar riots face death threats and trial delays:

“While they struggle with delayed trials in the courtroom, everyday life at home has been far more challenging for these women. In most of the cases, the gang rape accused are free, moving around in the same villages and threatening the women with consequences if they don’t withdraw their cases.

Fatima (name changed), who reported being gang-raped in the presence of her young daughter in her own house, has been facing death threats from the accused since August 2014. In her statement to the police, she claimed her family was offered Rs 15 lakh to withdraw the case, failing which the accused threatened to kill her and her family.

While Fatima and her family have not yet given in to the coercion, survivor Chaman (name changed) ended up changing her statement in court in November 2015.”