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Almost four years after 59 people lost their lives and 105 were injured in a fire at the Uphaar Cinema, the trial finally began in the court of additional district and sessions judge Mamata Sehgal on Wednesday morning.
The Ansal brothers -- Sushil and Gopal -- owners of Uphaar Cinema and 18 other accused, have been charged with causing death of the cinema-goers through negligence.
Kanwaljit Kaur, who lost her husband Col Inderjit Singh Bhalla in the tragedy, narrated the sequence of events on June 13, 1997.
"I and my friend first went to Chanakya theatre, for tickets for the film Border. As we did not get tickets there, we went to Uphaar, where we got balcony seats. I rang up my husband and told him that since we have four tickets for the 3-6 pm show, he should bring our daughter Payal along. After the interval, there was an explosion. We thought it was part of the film. A little later, the film stopped without any announcement and people were coughing, as the theatre was filled with smoke," she told the court in her examination, done by Central Bureau of Investigation counsel Y K Saxena.
"We held each others' hands and stood near the closed gate. My husband went looking for a way out. That was the last I saw of him. I fell unconscious, and regained consciousness at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. It was around 20:00 hours IST. I asked about my daughter and husband, and was told that my husband was in another hospital. It was only the next morning that I came to know that he was taken dead to the hospital," recalled Kaur.
Kaur has been asked to produce the death certificate of her husband on Thursday.
Sushil and Gopal, along with other accused who were chargesheeted only last month, were present in court.
The court took a one-and-half hour break and heard other cases only around 12:30 hours IST.
R N Gupta, former superintendent engineer of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi narrated how he was directed by the chief engineer to prepare a report on deviations and illegal constructions carried out by the owners in the cinema.
Before the court began recording the statement of the witnesses, Ramesh Gupta, advocate for the Ansals, took exception to the presence of other witnesses in the court.
The court then directed all witnesses, barring R N Gupta, to leave the court.
"We were provided a sanctioned plan of the cinema by DSP Kishore Kumar, who was investigating the case. We were taken to Uphaar on August 1, 1997, where I and four others inspected the site and compared it with drawings made available to us by the investigating agency. We noticed many discrepancies and there were many illegal constructions. The exhaust fans were pulling the air inside. We submitted a 14-page report to the agency," Gupta told the court.
On Thursday, the court will examine Rajshekhar Krishnamurthy, Neelam Krishnamurthy and Karan Kumar.
The Krishnamurthy couple lost their two children in the fire tragedy.
The couple has been playing a key role in bringing all Uphaar victims together.
The Ansal brothers have challenged the trial court's order of framing of charges against them and have filed a petition in the Delhi high court, seeking quashing of charges.
You may also want to seeInquiry report indicts Uphaar management, city authorities60 feared killed in Delhi fire
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