What was the Uphaar Cinema tragedy?

Subsequently, victims and the families of the deceased formed The Association of Victims of Uphaar Fire Tragedy (AVUT) and filed for damages. What followed was a protracted legal battle which tried to hold the owners of the theatre accountable.

On January 13, Netflix released a mini-series “Trial by Fire”, based on the synonymous book published in 2016. The show recounts the events of the tragedy as well as the following legal battle, from the perspective of Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy, the parents of two children lost in the fire.

The Indian Express looks back at the tragic incident and the bitter fight for justice that followed.

Early morning on that ill-fated day, the larger of the two transformers installed on the ground floor of the Uphaar Cinema building caught fire. While this fire was put out quickly, it damaged the transformer. To get it up and running before the movie hall began operations, quick repairs were carried out. The shoddiness of these repairs was reportedly behind the much larger fire later in the day.

At around 5 pm, the transformer caught fire again, after one of the repaired cables came loose and caused intense sparking. Since the transformer did not have an oil soak pit, as required under regulations, the burning oil spread outside. Thus, cars parked even at a distance of no more than a metre from the door of the transformer were also engulfed in the flames. By now, the blaze had gone out of control. Thick smoke shot upwards.

While the fire itself need not have been a death-knell for so many, the cinema was woefully unprepared for such a situation. Smoke entered the cinema hall and as the theatre lost power, there was complete chaos. While the viewers seated in the lower floor were able to escape, people in the balcony were trapped. A total of 59 people died of asphyxiation. Many were also injured in a stampede.

Crucially, due to traffic, fire tenders took over an hour to reach the spot.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for the Central Bureau of Investigation (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.”

First, the generator that caught fire was installed after flouting many norms. Not only did it not have adequate safety features, it was placed in what was being used as a parking lot. This meant the fire could not be easily contained as cars with tanks full of highly inflammable gasoline started catching fire. Further, as the investigation later revealed, the generator had not undergone periodic maintenance as required by law.

Second, as Harish Salve mentioned, the hall had inadequate safety measures and procedures in place. 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.

Third, many exits were locked and gangways blocked due to the hall making unauthorised extensions to increase seating capacity. There were also various unauthorised businesses being run within the building, occupying spaces that were supposed to be empty.