Police identify nine victims of Kolkata fire, including 7 Bangladeshi nationals
Kolkata, Aug 20 (IANS) The police on Thursday disclosed the identities of all nine persons killed in the fire incident at a hotel building on Mirza Ghalib Street in central Kolkata.
Of the nine killed, seven are nationals of Bangladesh, one from Giridih in neighbouring Jharkhand state and one from Siliguri in Darjeeling district in North Bengal.
The Kolkata Police, in a statement, have also disclosed the passport numbers of the seven Bangladeshi citizens killed in the fire. The nine deceased persons include six males, two females and one child.
Four among these seven Bangladeshi citizens are from the same family. They are Debasish Dutta (39); his wife, Afsana Shirmiin (27); their toddler son, Swarnasish Dutta; and Afsana’s father Mohammad Akram Ali (74).
They had come to Kolkata for Akram’s medical treatment. They were residents of Kushtia district in Bangladesh, and Debasish was a journalist.
The fifth Bangladeshi victim was identified as Babu Ahmed (37), a resident of Dhaka. The other two are Rebati Sarker, a female and M. Alimuzzaman, both residents of Kaliganj in Bangladesh. Their ages have not been disclosed by the city police.
Apart from these seven Bangladeshi nationals, 19-year-old Sandeep Paswan, reportedly a staff member in one of the many hotels in the same building, has also been declared dead. Paswan is an original resident of Giridih. The ninth person killed in the fire incident has been identified as Yog Narayan Aggarwal (68), a resident of Siliguri in Darjeeling district.
It is learnt that all of them died mainly out of suffocation rather than burn injuries. The initial investigation has revealed that the intensity of the fire that broke out at a hotel on the third floor of the building was not much. However, because of a lack of proper ventilation and evacuation facilities, these nine people were suffocated to death because of the thick black smoke that spread in the building.
The West Bengal government has announced a detailed special audit of all hotels, lodges and guesthouses in the Mirza Ghalib Street area following the incident.
The New Market Police Station, under whose jurisdiction the building falls, has registered a suo motu case. The state fire services department has also lodged a separate complaint.
–IANS
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