HYDERABAD: A hay-filled warehouse in which an illegal air-cooler factory was operating went up in flames in Hyderabad just before dawn Wednesday, and six workers, four of them from Jharkhand, were burnt alive.
The illegal air-cooler factory is located near pillar no. 253 of the PVNR Expressway near Attapur within the Rajendra Nagar Police Station limits of Hyderabad. A large amount of flammable material was stored in the warehouse which was being used to make non-branded air-coolers. The material included a large quantity of plastic, dry grass and other combustible material such as domestic gas cylinder and domestic cooking oil.
A police source said, "Workers were working in the godown when the fire broke out and became an inferno feeding on the stacks of hay and plastic material stored in the warehouse.”
Four of the victims have been identified as Irfan, Shahadu alias Shahnawaz, Mujahid and Saddam, all from Nerva village in Jharkhand. The other two victims are yet to be unidentified.
According to inspector V Umender of the Rajendra Nagar police station, the air-cooler facility was a temporary facilityowned by one Pramod Kumar of Karwan locality in Secunderabad.
The cause of fire breakout is not known. But it is suspected that sparks from the cheap electrical materials in the unit provided the ignition.
"The victims were workers who were engaged in January. The factory owner Pramod Kumar has been taken into custody and a case has been booked against him under Section 304 B,” the inspector said.
Watch video of the incident below: