New Delhi, December 01: The Supreme Court today said the Ansals, owners of Uphaar Cinema, cannot escape liability for the gruesome June 1997 fire mishap in which 59 people perished by merely passing the buck to the erstwhile Delhi Vidyut Board (DVB).
A bench of Justices R V Raveendran and K S Radhakrishnan said the theatre owners should not abdicate its liability by merely insisting that the mishap occured due to the fire caused by short circuit emanating from DVB’s transoformer.
“Blaming DVB is like beating a dead horse”, the bench quipped when senior counsel A K Ganguly, appearing for the owners, blamed DVB for the incident during the screening of the superhit film “Border”.
The apex court said it was true that the transformer from where the fire started belonged to DVB but the latter has also accepted responsibility and agreed to pay its share of compensation.
–Agencies