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Neelam Krishnamoorthy, the president of the Association of Victims of Uphaar, hit out at the judiciary and the government for the fire that engulfed Kamala Mills in Mumbai’s Lower Parel in the wee hours of Friday, 29 December.
She drew a comparison between Friday night’s tragedy at Kamala Mills compound – in which 14 people died – to the Uphaar Cinema fire of 1997 that killed 59 people, including her two children, Unnati and Ujjwal.
In the Uphaar fire case, the Supreme Court gave a judgment in February 2017 sentencing real estate baron Gopal Ansal to one year in prison, but his elder brother, Sushil Ansal, escaped a jail term because of his old age and the fact that he had served five months and 20 days as an undertrial.
Neelam and her husband, Shekhar Krishnamoorthy, have even written a book ‘Trial by Fire’ that talks about how the system let them down and how despite everything that went against them, they still remain undeterred. Their daughter was 17 years old and their son was 13 on the day tragedy struck Uphaar cinema.
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