Kolkata: Kolkata Police informed on Friday that their investigating team probing the devastating fire at Hotel Shikha Inn on Mirza Ghalib Street, which killed nine people, including a child, on the intervening night of August 18 and 19, had submitted the chargesheet in the case.
In the chargesheet filed at a lower court in Kolkata on Thursday, three persons have been named.
The first name in the chargesheet is Bireshwar Moitra, the original owner of the hotel Shikha Inn, where the fire tragedy happened. The second person named in the chargesheet is Abu Zafar, who took the hotel on lease from Moitra.
The third person named in the chargesheet is Abu’s wife, Saba Zafar, who was the last to be arrested by the city police last month after she had been absconding since the tragedy took place.
The chargesheet contains recorded statements of 90 witnesses, said a city police official.
The accused have been charged under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, relating to involuntary murder, attempted involuntary murder, endangering life and conspiracy. A forensic report has also been submitted along with it.
“The 350-page chargesheet also highlights the horror of the incident. The chargesheet mentions how the originally bigger hotel rooms were demolished and converted into multiple smaller rooms. Almost every room had AC. Installing so many ACs without following any rules resulted in an overload of electricity. The fire spread from the board and started consuming the rooms,” the city police officer said.
The chargesheet also stated that the building, which housed several hotels, including Shikha Inn, was actually a residential complex that was illegally converted into a hotel later, without the permission of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and the West Bengal Fire Services Department authorities.
The fire broke out on the third floor of the building housing Hotel Shikha Inn and several other lodges. The hotel rooms quickly filled with thick smoke, causing most of the nine victims to die of suffocation.
The majority of those who lost their lives were Bangladeshi nationals visiting Kolkata for medical treatment.
The original hotel owner, Bireshwar Moitra, initially fled after the incident but was arrested shortly after at his residence in Behala, on Kolkata’s southern outskirts.
During interrogation, he disclosed that he had leased the hotel to Abu Zafar and his wife, Saba Zafar, for a monthly rent of Rs 40,000.
While police arrested Abu shortly after, Saba managed to evade capture until her arrest on October 28.
(IANS)
