: The Couple Behind ‘Trial by Fire’ Their Long Battle for Justice After Uphaar Fire #IndiaNEWS #Activism Justice delayed is justice denied. This famous legal maxim encapsulates the story

The Couple Behind ‘Trial by Fire’ Their Long Battle for Justice After Uphaar Fire #IndiaNEWS #Activism
Justice delayed is justice denied.

This famous legal maxim encapsulates the story of Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy, who spent over two decades seeking justice after they lost their children Unnati (17) and Ujjwal (13) to the devastating fire that engulfed Uphaar Cinema.

More than 25 years ago, the Uphaar fire tragedy in the national capital took the lives of 59 people who died of asphyxiation, while a further 103 people were seriously injured in the ensuing stampede.

That’s one way of looking at this entire episode. But there was another story that needed to be told — the maze of the Indian legal system and its inability to hold persons of wealth and influence to account often breaks ordinary citizens seeking justice. However, this imperfect legal system never broke Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy’s dogged pursuit of justice.

That story was recently captured in a fantastic mini-series on Netflix Trial by Fire starring Abhay Deol and Rajshri Desphande, who play the couple, based on the book written in Neelam’s voice.

Netflix mini-series Trial by Fire poster

The fire

On 13 June 1997, during a screening of JP Dutta’s Border, a massive fire broke out in Uphaar Cinema located in the Green Park area of south Delhi.

While the cause of the fire was attributed to shoddy repair work done on a poorly maintained transformer, the deaths were down to the fact that the cinema was woefully underprepared for a fire. With the cinema hall engulfed in smoke, the establishment lost power and there was total chaos. While those in the lower floor could escape, people seated in the balcony were trapped. Making matters worse, fire tenders took more than an hour to reach the location.

Harish Salve, a senior advocate appearing for the CBI, told the Delhi High Court in 2007, “Safety measures, meant for panic situations, were not in place in the ill-fated theatre… the persons, who were getting financial gains from the operation of the cinema, were criminally liable for the lapses. ???

There were many lapses on the part of the establishment and its owners Sushil and Gopal Ansal that cost 59 people their lives.

Beyond faulty equipment and its placement, which flouted a whole host of norms, the cinema hall did not have the requisite safety measures in place.

According to an Indian Express explainer, “There were no exit lights, foot lights, or emergency lights in the cinema — when the building lost power, the hall became pitch dark. There was also no public announcement system to alert the movie-goers of the fire. In the darkness of the cinema hall, it took a significant while for viewers to even realise there was a massive fire in the building.