A massive fire broke out at the seventh floor of the New Secretariat building in Kolkata, West Bengal on Friday morning.
The fire that broke out around 10.25 am, raged for over three hours, and was brought under control by as many as 23 fire tenders. According to primary reports, the fire broke out at the state panchayat minister, Subrata Mukherjee’s office on the seventh floor of the building. Besides some properties, important documents of the state government departments have reportedly been lost in the fire.
However, a month ago, the state fire services minister, Javed Khan had ordered the DG of fire services department to refurbish outdated fire extinguishing equipment across all state government offices – including the New Secretariat and Calcutta High Court. But, they were not revamped on time and ultimately led to this incident.
Police in its investigation, will find out whether the fire extinguishing equipment installed inside the building were outdated or not. “As of now, the cause of fire is not known. There is sufficient fire extinguishing equipment installed inside the building, but we are yet to find out whether they are in working position or not,” said Mukherjee.
This is the second important state government office after the Writers’ Buildings in the state. This high rise houses a number of state government offices including – panchayat, public health (PHE) department, Public Works Department (PWD), transport and several other departments.
According to the West Bengal Fire Services minister Javed Khan, there were no casualties and no one was trapped inside, but a fire department official sustained minor injuries. Khan also expressed displeasure over the incident and said that the fire services department will find out if there was any act of sabotage.
Kolkata mayor Sovan Chatterjee, state panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee and Kolkata Police Commissioner, Surajit Kar Purkayastha were also rushed to the spot.
Meanwhile, the Detective Department of the Kolkata Police has taken up this case and has set up a special team to probe into the incident. The team will be led by an officer of assistant commissioner rank and will investigate whether there was an act of sabotage.
After the cooling down process, a team comprising forensic experts from Kolkata Police were rushed to the spot to find out the cause of the fire.
