Gopal Ansal goes to jail after SC refuses to give more time

Real estate baron Gopal Ansal on Monday evening surrendered to Tihar jail authorities after the Supreme Court refused to grant him any more time.

Jail officials said Ansal underwent medical examination at the prison hospital after he surrendered around 5.30pm on Monday, before being lodged in subjail number three.

Ansal had earlier moved a petition before President Pranab Mukherjee, requesting him to pardon his one-year sentence in the 1997 Uphaar tragedy case in which 59 persons had died of asphyxia when the cinema hall caught fire while watching the Bollywood blockbuster Border.

Gopal, 68, informed the Supreme Court on Monday about the petition and made a last-ditch effort to escape jail. His counsel, senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, requested a threejudge bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar to give his client more time to surrender as he has filed the mercy plea before the President. The lawyer said his client had to report to the jail authorities by Monday evening.

But the bench rejected the prayer made by Jethmalani who termed Gopal’s jail term as the “grossest case of justice.” He said the President was not available and, therefore, the bench should waive the rules of procedure to stay the surrender.

“You go to the President. How can we grant you injunction,” Justice Khehar told Jethmalani whose request to ask the President to expedite his decision on the mercy petition was also dismissed. “How can we tell the President to expedite?” the bench shot back.

The SC had on March 9 dismissed Gopal’s plea for modification of its February 9 order asking him to surrender in four weeks to serve the one-year sentence. A bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi had fixed March 20 as the deadline for him to surrender and serve the remainder of his sentence.

Gopal’s elder brother, Sushil Ansal — a co-convict and co-owner of Uphaar — was spared jail on the grounds of his age and ill-health. Both the brothers have paid ₹30 crore each as fine. Gopal had invoked the principle of parity while seeking a waiver of his jail term.

Requesting the modification of the February 9 order — which came on a review petition by CBI and Association for Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) — Gopal had said the court could not have denied him the relief extended to his brother Sushil because his medical condition was equally bad.

Both CBI and AVUT had assailed the Supreme Court bench verdict that earlier held the Ansal brothers guilty of criminal negligence and fined them but did not send them to jail, beyond the period already spent by them in Tihar during the trial.