The Delhi high court on February 16 refused to grant relief to Ansal brothers, Sushil and Gopal, in the Uphaar cinema fire tragedy evidence tampering case. The court said that suspending the seven-year jail term handed to the brothers by a magistrate in 2021, as prayed for, would erode the faith of the public in the judicial system. It added that suspending the sentence “would entail allowing convicts, whose finding of guilt has already been established, to take advantage of the passage of time as well as the judiciary as an institution”. The high court stressed that their medical condition was not that serious that it should justify the suspension.
It, however, requested the trial court to decide the appeals against the sentence within a month since the Ansals and others “inhabit the stigma of desecrating the temple of justice”. There was a need to decide the appeals by conducting day-to-day hearings, if necessary, it pointed out.