Closure will continue to evade families of victims of Uphaar fire

Closure will continue to evade the families of the victims of the fire that broke out in 1997 at Delhi’s Uphaar cinema in which 59 people were killed and over a 100 seriously injured. The Supreme Court has held realty tycoons Gopal and Sushil Ansal, owners of Uphaar, guilty of criminal negligence, but allowed them to walk free, deeming the period they already served in jail — less than six months — and a fine of Rs60 crore, as befitting punishment. The apex court’s three-judge bench has possibly gone by the reasoning that the hefty fine and the construction of a trauma centre/hospital and other social welfare activities can compensate for their roles in the crime. In fact, this was also the argument of the one of the judges in the two-judge bench, which in March 2014, had convicted the Ansal brothers but differed on the quantum of punishment. While Justice TS Thakur convicted them to one year imprisonment, the other judge Gyan Sudha Mishra convicted the brothers to two years imprisonment, but offered to suspend the second year of punishment if they were to pay fines of Rs50 crore each. 

Justice Mishra wrote: “Nonetheless one will also have to be pragmatic and cannot ignore that the enhancement of sentence of one year to two years to the accused cannot bring back those who suffered and lost their lives in the tragic and the horrific incident.” In her reasoning, the ends of justice would not be met merely by imprisonment, but also “by substituting it with substantial amount of fine to be used for the public cause in the memory of the Uphaar victims”. The trouble with this line of thought is that it can legitimise the idea that monetary compensation can make amends for a crime. If an inference is drawn that the Ansals qualified for the reduced sentence because they had the financial wherewithal to pay a huge fine, it does send a wrong message to society. The judge also justified her decision by placing reliance on the controversial 1989 Supreme Court judgment in the Bhopal tragedy case noting that “the entire criminal case itself had been quashed by way of settlement against the accused and the sentence was substituted with heavy amount of fine which was paid to the victims by way of compensation”. For two decades now, the country has been trying to live down the impact of that verdict, which was a lost opportunity to firm up the tort liability for awarding damages for accidents, and imposing punishment for criminal negligence.

Unfortunately, it continues to serve as a judicial precedent even today.

What has not gone unnoticed in the Uphaar tragedy is the stellar role played by The Association of Victims of the Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) and their stance that stiff punishments in the case would ensure justice and serve as deterrent. The AVUT has also met with disappointment in the civil case it filed against the Ansals. In 2011, the Supreme Court drastically reduced the compensation awarded by the Delhi High Court to the families of deceased aged above 20 from Rs18 lakh to Rs10 lakh, and from Rs15 lakh to Rs.7.5 lakh for families of deceased aged below 20. Besides, the punitive damages against the Ansal brothers were slashed from Rs2.5 crore to Rs.25 lakh.

Ultimately, the bare fact of the case is that the Uphaar management profited through ticket sales from the illegally added seats that blocked the exit pathways and led to the loss of so many lives. Unless command responsibility — the duty to supervise subordinates and face civil and criminal liability — becomes the norm, India is condemned to live with the danger of Bhopal, 1984, and Uphaar, 1997, repeating.