Paarth Republic fire: Accident or arson?
On February 20, flat no. 401 on the fourth floor of Tower 3, which was inhabited by Om Tiwari and five of his family members, caught fire. Tiwari, 40, died on Sunday while undergoing treatment at a private hospital.
There might be more to a massive fire that broke out in an apartment of Sarojini Nagar’s Paarth Republic, fire officials suspected.
The incident, which killed one of the residents of flat no. 401, might not be just a plain accident, they said even as they argued that if a blaze of such an intensity in an apartment was possible without an explosion.
On February 20, flat no. 401 on the fourth floor of Tower 3, which was inhabited by Om Tiwari and five of his family members, caught fire. Tiwari, 40, died on Sunday while undergoing treatment at a private hospital.
Tiwari was initially brought to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (Civil) Hospital where doctors diagnosed him with 72% burn injuries, said Rajesh Srivastava, the hospital’s chief medical superintendent. No other family members were harmed in the incident.
A senior fire officer who had gone to the incident site said: “This was the biggest fire in a flat that I’ve seen so far. All household stuff were burnt. Suspectedly, it started from the kitchen after boiling milk spilled on to the cooking gas. Then, it spread to the bedroom, trapping a resident,” said.
“Our firemen were also injured. Such a massive fire has never broken out in a flat, which is one of the reasons why we suspect that it may be staged,” the officer said as he compared the incident to the Hotel Levana Suites fire, which had claimed four lives.
Describing the incident site, another fireman said, “The kitchen was a little far from the bedroom, where the man was trapped. How can a fire spread to the entire house when there was no cylinder explosion?”
Stating that the exact cause of the fire was still being investigated, Mangesh Kumar, the chief fire officer of Lucknow, said, “When we reached the site, the blaze was intense. Om Tiwari’s wife Snehlata Pandey told us that she had left some milk on the stove to boil and gone out of the apartment with her son when the fire broke out.”
Even police did not rule out the possibility of the fire not being an accident. Sarojini Nagar SHO Rajdev Ram Prajapati, “It cannot be ruled out that the fire might be staged. So far, we have not received any complaints in this regard except the one against the building management for which an FIR has been registered. The entire matter is being looked into from all angles.”
Assistant commissioner of police Saumya Pandey said, “The cause of the fire is still a matter of investigation. We will proceed with the investigation based on the fire department’s memo.”
FIR against building management
On Sunday, Sarojini Nagar police received a complaint from Tiwari’s brother-in-law Ashwini Kant Pandey, an advocate, accusing the owner and manager of the high-rise society of negligence. After this, an FIR was registered under Sections 125 (b) and 326 (a) of the BNS.
