Court issues summons to Ansal brothers

New Delhi, June 19 (IANS) A Delhi court Tuesday ordered the city's leading builders Sushil Ansal and Gopal Ansal to appear before it to explain their alleged attempts to stop a campaign for justice to the victims of the 1997 Uphaar theatre fire tragedy.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kamini Lau issued summons to the Ansal brothers and their two employees, Praveen Sharma and Deepak Kathpalia, asking them to appear before her July 9.

Lau issued summons to the four on a complaint by Association of Uphar Tragedy Victims president Neelam Krishnamurthy that she was abused and threatened by the two employees on May 10 after a hearing in a case involving "criminal culpability and murderous lapses" of the Ansal brothers leading to the tragedy, in which 59 people were killed and hundreds other injured on June 13, 1997.

Krishnamurty lost her two children in the fire accident.

In her complaint, she said the two employees began taking her photographs on their mobile phones after she emerged out of the court of Additional Sessions Judge Mamta Sehgal in the Patiala House court premises, where the trial of the case is underway.

She said in her complaint that as she objected to being photographed by them, they began "abusing her in filthy language" and threatened her with dire consequences for following the trial of the case.

Krishnamurthy also cited in her complaint some past incidents of such harassments by the Ansals.