KOLKATA: Police have arrested the owner of a hotel in Tarapith in West Bengal’s Birbhum district where a devastating fire broke out, killing eight pilgrims and injuring several others.
Police are investigating whether the hotel authorities had taken adequate safety measures to prevent the fire.
At least eight people, mainly pilgrims, were killed and several others critically injured in an early morning fire at the hotel on Monday, police said.
The fire was spotted around 5 am on the ground floor of the four-storey hotel building in the temple town of Tarapith, when most of the guests were asleep, they said.
Twenty-two fire tenders were pressed into service at the spot and brought the blaze under control within around three hours.
The injured were taken to the Rampurhat Government Medical College and Hospital.
Hotel officials claimed the fire was caused by a short circuit.
The arrested owner, Kalyan Paul, of the hotel ‘Bideshini’, close to the Tarapith Kali temple, claimed that there were no loopholes in the hotel’s fire safety measures and that there was an exit door at the back of the building.
“Electricity connections in the hotel were snapped by our staff soon after the fire was spotted early this morning. The entire hotel complex suddenly plunged into darkness and, as a result, boarders could not come out of the hotel. The anxious boarders could not find the exit door because of the darkness and smoke caused by the fire. They tried to come out of the hotel through its reception centre and directly faced the fire,” Kalyan, who also sustained injuries, told reporters at the spot.
According to police and fire brigade sources, 22 injured people, including nine unconscious victims, were rescued. Many of the injured have been discharged after treatment at the state-run teaching hospital.
Thousands of pilgrims from across the state had come to the temple town of Tarapith to offer ‘puja’ at the temple on the last Monday of the Bengali ‘Srabon’ month.
With the sound of abrupt explosions, boarders in different hotels woke up in fear and anxiety.
Many boarders of the fire-ravaged hotel found that the flames were rushing towards their rooms, virtually engulfing them, when they opened their doors early on Monday morning. They closed the doors as soon as they saw the flames and tried to call the local fire services and police station for help.
The pilgrims alleged that they had no idea about the exit door at the back and could not find any other way out of the hotel because of the darkness.
They also said that most of the rooms became suffocating due to smoke and the lack of windows. Many of them fell ill due to suffocation inside the rooms.
Debadrita Dutta, a pilgrim from Cooch Behar district in the state, told the media, “I was in the second-floor room of the hotel. Somehow, I managed to come down through the rainpipe of the verandah. We were sleeping but woke up after hearing a sudden cry from outside. I opened the door and found massive fire and smoke engulfing the hotel. I don’t know anything more about how I came down through the pipe.”
Nilesh Srikant, additional superintendent of police of Birbhum, said, “The injured have been admitted to the Rampurhat Government Medical College and Hospital. Police are investigating into the incident.”
The fire spread rapidly through decorative and fibre materials inside the hotel. Smoke billowed to the upper floors and trapped several guests in their rooms.
A woman from Kolkata, who managed to escape the blaze, recalled the panic inside the hotel. “Suddenly, the entire hotel was engulfed in smoke. We could not breathe, and it was hard to find an escape route,” she said. Several injured people taken to hospital had suffered severe burns.
Another guest, Tapanjyoti Mondal, said he was trapped in his room with his wife and two children for nearly 45 minutes. “We could not come out of the door because of the blaze. Since the room had no window, they escaped through an opening near the bathroom ceiling,” he said.
Mondal’s mother was unconscious while his sister suffered injuries in the incident.