Uphaar case: Convicted DVB staff moves HC

NEW DELHI: A former Delhi Vidyut Board (DVB) employee, undergoing seven-year rigorous imprisonment in the 1997 Uphaar fire tragedy case on Friday approached the Delhi High Court challenging his conviction.
    
Justice H R Malhotra, admitting the appeal of convict Bir Singh, issued notice to the CBI and asked it to respond by January 13.
    
Singh, who was working as senior electrician with the DVB, had repaired the transformer at the Uphaar cinema on the morning of June 13, 1997, the day a devastating fire at the theatre left 59 cine-goers dead due to asphyxia.
    
Challenging his conviction, the electrician alleged that he had no complicity or any direct role in the incident and that he had wrongly been held guilty under Section 304 part II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC.
    
The court, however, refused to grant him bail by suspending his sentence saying that the other party (CBI) was required to be heard on the issue.
    
The trial court had on November 20 convicted all the 12 accused under various provisions of the IPC for causing death of 59 cine-goers who were asphyxiated during the screening of a Hindi blockbuster 'Border' inside Uphaar cinema on June 13, 1997.
    
Apart from the Ansal brothers and three others who were sentenced to two years' imprisonment, seven other convicts were sentenced to seven years' jail.
    
Radha Krishan Sharma, N S Chopra, Ajit Chowdhary (Uphaar managers), Manmohan Unniyal (cinema's gatekeeper), Brij Mohan Satija, A K Gera and Bir Singh (all DVB officials were handed down seven years' jail term.