BHOPAL: Autopsy reports have revealed that massive burns and suffocation caused the deaths of eight persons, including two children, in the pre-dawn blaze that engulfed the triple-storied house of a businessman in Indore on March 18.
Seven out of the eight bodies have been identified.
While five, including the house owner and businessman Manoj Pugalia (65) and daughter-in-law Simran (30) died due to massive fire burns, two others, among them Pugalia’s brother-in-law Vijay Sethia (65) and Sethia’s daughter Ruchika (35) died due to suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning.
Importantly, Pugalia’s eldest son, Saurabh, who lost his wife Simran in the killer mishap and managed to escape from the site along with his mother and two brothers, had suspected that the deaths might have been caused by electric current flowing in the house, following the electric short circuit.
The autopsy of seven bodies had been performed at the MGM Medical College in Indore, but the same forensic procedure of the eighth body, a six-year-old boy, Tanay (Ruchika’s son), couldn’t be performed, as the rescue teams could find only his leg and the remains of soft tissues stuck to a foam bed sheet.
According to a senior police officer related to the ongoing probe, circumstantial evidence collected from the spot on March 18 morning as well as detailed information shared by MP Electricity Board (MPEB) about Pugalia’s House’s electricity connection over the last few days, strongly suggest the possibility of the fire being caused due to electric short circuit in the charging station of the EV car.
Importantly, Saurabh Pugalia has been continuously rejecting police-administration claims about the blaze, suspected to have been caused by an electric short circuit during EV charging.
Saurabh has also been claiming that the short circuit happened due to a defect in the nearby electric pole, and stating that EV was not being charged on the night of March 17-18.