Kolkata Fire: Hotel Violated Every Possible Safety Norm, Say Officials

What started as a minor blaze inside a virtual tinderbox of a hotel - operating without even basic firefighting provisions - quickly escalated into one of the worst fire tragedies in Kolkata in recent memory, claiming the lives of at least 14 people, including a woman and two children.

None of the victims, though, was charred by the flames.

While Manoj Paswan, an employee of the hotel, succumbed to his injuries following his attempt to escape the blaze by jumping off the second-floor cornice, the remaining 13 bodies, recovered later from the site, showed signs of death by asphyxiation, police said.

Multiple bodies were found at the narrow staircase on the second and third floors of the hotel, and the rest were discovered inside the guest rooms locked from inside, officials confirmed.

The incident triggered tragic memories of the March 2010 Stephen Court fire on Park Street, which left 43 dead, and the December 2011 AMRI Hospital blaze that claimed over 90 lives.

Burrabazar, the city's thickly populated wholesale trading hub, has been witness to numerous major fire incidents in recent times owing to its old, unplanned and illegal constructions sporting gross violations of fire safety norms.

A fire at the Surjya Sen Street market, not far from the current accident site, killed at least 19 people, mostly labourers, in 2013.

In June 2020, a devastating fire at the neighbourhood Bagree Market destroyed the 150-year-old building.

The low-cost six-storey Rituraj Hotel in Mechhua Falpatti area of Burrabazar in central Kolkata, housing 50 guest rooms, violated every possible fire safety norm in the book since it came up 25 years ago, firefighting officials said.

According to police, the hotel was hosting 88 guests in its 42 occupied rooms when fire broke out at one of the east-side rooms on the hotel's first floor around 7.30 pm on Tuesday.

While the firefighters managed to contain the flames from spreading to the upper floors, thick black fumes of gases quickly engulfed the building, converting the premises into a virtual gas chamber.

"It is evident that some of the victims were trying to escape the flames by trying to run out of the building, but were choked because there were no alternative escape routes other than that one staircase. Others were hoping to save themselves by locking them up in their respective rooms until the smoke suffocated them to death," Bipin Ganatra, a voluntary firefighter and Padmashri Awardee, who rushed to the hotel to douse the flames and assist officials in their rescue operations, told PTI.

"None of the firefighting mechanisms on display at the property was in working condition," he added.

Following an inspection of the hotel on Wednesday, Ranvir Kumar, DG fire services, said, "The hotel owners acquired fire safety NOC three years ago, in 2022. That license has not been renewed since. We have registered an FIR against the owners." While local people maintained that Akash Chawla, a co-owner of the hotel, had visited the site late Tuesday night, police said the owners are still missing.

A visit to the property revealed that a gate, barely eight feet wide, which led to the hotel's reception desk and a narrow staircase leading to the first floor, served as its sole entry and exit point.

A dance bar, which police confirmed had no requisite clearance from authorities, was under construction on the building's first floor, the same level where the fire initially started.

The construction had not only led to the sealing of windows of the area with bricks and concrete, which plugged air ventilation, it also blocked off the second staircase with a downed shutter and prevented victims from accessing the alternative escape route, officials said.

During rescue efforts on Tuesday evening, fire services personnel were seen using hydraulic ladders to transport hapless boarders, who had taken refuge on the hotel rooftop and were left stranded there, to the roof of an adjacent building from where they were brought down to safety.

Scenes of desperate people precariously hanging from narrow ledges of the building and even from the hotel's glow signboard before they could be rescued were also witnessed.

Fire services minister Sujit Basu, while confirming the ongoing illegal activities at the hotel, said that a defunct fire alarm system and inoperative water sprinklers only added to the firefighters' challenges and to the victims' pleas.

"Repeated instructions to hotel owners go unheeded. They will have to own up responsibility for this. We are holding the necessary investigations and will take strong steps against those responsible," Basu said.

Accusing the Trinamool Congress minister of "passing the buck", local BJP leader Sajal Ghosh said, "The wake-up call had come long before when so many people were killed in the Stephen Court fire. I refuse to believe that police were unaware of these violations at the hotel. Nothing has changed in the city in the past 15 years to ensure people's safety and there are serious doubts on whether anything at all will ever change under this regime."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)