New Delhi:
It was one of India's worst fires. More than 400 people, most of them women and children, were burnt alive in a tent set up for a school function in Haryana. 15 years later, the Supreme Court has asked the school to pay 10 crores as compensation to families of the victims.
The Supreme Court has told the DAV Public School "It is your school function, you should have checked the place, it has no sufficient exit. You have conducted the function at an unsafe place". This interim compensation will have to be paid within 6 weeks. The school has been arguing that compensating families should not be its responsibility.
On December 23, 1995, Dabwali on the Haryana-Punjab border became a national headline when the giant fire erupted at the Rajiv Marriage Palace. A tent set up the DAV school's function collapsed on a crowd of a thousand people. It would later be obvious that all fire safety guidelines had been ignored. In addition to the 400 people who died, another 200 were injured.
A bureaucrat, MP Bildan, who was the chief guest at the function was accused of escaping from the tent, escorted by the police, instead of helping with rescue operations.