Kolkata fire: Hotel owner and manager arrested; 2 victims yet to be identified

Kolkata: The Kolkata Police, on Thursday, arrested the owner and the manager of the hotel at Madan Mohan Burman Street in central Kolkata, where a devastating fire claimed 15 lives.

The arrested persons have been identified as Akash Chawla (owner) and Gaurav Kapur (manager). Both were absconding since the fire broke out at the six-story hotel on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday night, the state fire services department filed a complaint against the two at the local Jorasanko Police Station, charging them with gross negligence in adopting the minimum fire safety norms mandatory for any hotel building.

At the same time, Kolkata Police also registered a suo motu FIR against both the owner and the manager.

Cases have been registered under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including that of culpable homicide. Most of the sections framed against them are non-bailable, confirmed a senior official of the Kolkata Police.

Meanwhile, city police sources have confirmed that the identities of 13 people killed in the fire mishap have already been accessed by the investigating officials, and they are trying to track the identities of the two other victims.

Most of the people who were killed in the fire are residents of other states, mostly Tamil Nadu. The 15 killed in the mishap include one woman and two children.

Already, the state fire services minister, Sujit Bose and the director general of the same department, Ranveer Kumar, admitted severe lapses in fire safety management at the hotel building.

The fire licence of the hotel expired three years ago, and the hotel authorities did not bother to renew it. The fire alarm installed at the hotel was not functional. The fire-extinguishing equipment at the hotel did not function at the crucial moment.

Initial findings by the investigation team have revealed other major lapses in ensuring proper emergency evacuation arrangements and ventilation facilities at the hotel, as a result of which the majority of those killed in the fire died not because of getting charred but because of suffocation caused by the smoke emitting out of the fire.

The local people alleged that despite several complaints of illegal constructions in the hotel raised in the past, neither the Kolkata Municipal Corporation nor the local police took any action to prevent the untoward incident.

IANS