After 19 years, Uphaar cinema’s fire is reignited in a book by the victims of the tragedy. ‘Trial by Fire’, written by Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy talks about one of the worst fire tragedies in Indian history, the despair of the victims’ families and the failure of our judicial system.
The Uphaar cinema fire- which occurred on the dreadful day of Friday, 13 June 1997 in Green Park, Delhi, during the 3 to 6 pm screening of the movie Border- claimed lives of 59 people, including the children of Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy.
Soon after the 1997 fire, the victims and the families of the deceased formed The Association of Victims of Uphaar Fire Tragedy (AVUT) under the guidance of senior advocate KTS Tulsi and filed the landmark Civil Compensation Case against Ansal Theatre and Clubotels Ltd, which owned the theatre.
After waiting for justice for 18 long years, on August 19, 2015, the Supreme Court of India unjustly decided the Ansals pay Rs 60 Crore or serve a two-year rigorous jail term in the Uphaar fire case. Neelam Krishnamoorthy, President of AVUT and co-author of the book said, “‘Trial by Fire’ is a book that tells the stories of the many tragedies and not just the story of our personal tragedy of the devastating loss of our two beautiful children, Unnati and Ujjwal. The book also reveals the tragedy of our flawed system that permits wealthy and powerful corporate, convicted of heinous crimes to walk freely.”
The Uphaar fire case had approximately 4,000 court hearings in the past 19 years and none of them had been able to grant justice to the victims. KTS Tulsi who took the case as a pro bono said, “It’s been one of the greatest regrets of my life that we could not persuade the Supreme Court to seize the opportunity and develop a Law of Torts.
We asked only for Rs 100 Crore for such a huge tragedy and that too because the psyche of the Indian judges is that we can’t permit a tragedy to become a windfall and that’s where the Supreme Court disappointed us. We had started this fight to ensure that this kind of thing does not happen again by introducing a safety culture in our country but we are still waiting for that day to come.”
“We had no idea that 19 years down the line we will still be waiting for some sense of justice,” says Neelam, “Or that we would pen a book that can be called as ‘Trial by tribulations’ awaiting those who believe that justice will be done. We had hoped that those responsible for the murder of 59 people would be put behind bars.”