Uphaar Cinema fire

The Uphaar Cinema fire was a major fire in Green Park, Delhi. The fire started on Friday, 13 June 1997, at Uphaar Cinema (a theatre) during the three o'clock screening of the movie Border. 59 people were trapped inside and died of asphyxiation (suffocation), while 103 were seriously injured in the resulting stampede.

The victims and the families of the deceased later formed The Association of Victims of Uphaar Fire Tragedy (AVUT), which filed the landmark civil compensation case. The suit led to an award of ₹25 crore (equivalent to ₹69 crore or US$7.1 million in 2026) in compensation for the victims' families. The case is now considered a landmark decision in India's civil compensation law. However, on 13 October 2011, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice R Raveendran, inexplicably, nearly halved the sum of compensation awarded to victims by the [Delhi High Court], and slashed punitive damages to be paid by cinema owners, the Ansal brothers, from ₹2.5 crore (equivalent to ₹5.6 crore or US$580,000 in 2026) to ₹25 lakh (equivalent to ₹56 lakh or US$58,000 in 2026).

In its final order on 25 August 2015, the Supreme Court modified its earlier order and sentenced the Ansal brothers to a two-year jail term if they failed to pay the families of the victims Rs.30 crore each within three months. The Supreme Court reviewed this order again on 9 February 2017, and sentenced Gopal Ansal to a year in jail for the case. The other accused, Sushil Ansal, did not have to serve a further sentence because of his old age.