FIR filed in Ballygunge Science College fire incident

An associate professor of Zoology department has filed an FIR with the Ballygunge police station regarding the fire that broke out in the department on March 21.

Ena Ray Banerjee has filed the FIR at Ballygunge police station on Thursday. It was learnt that till Thursday no FIR was filed with the police and no forensic team had visited the spot.

It was learnt that the total damage to the specimen would be over Rs 1crore. 

The specimens were either given to the department as gift or were given under exchange programmes. 

The museum is a world heritage museum and was set up a century ago. 

The then vice chancellor of Calcutta University had set up the department. Scholars like JBS Halden and Patrick Gades had worked in the department. 

Gades later became close to Acharya Jadagish Chandra Bose and his biography of Bose is considered to be most authentic. After the fire broke out the specimens that got damaged were thrown along with the garbage without any attempt to restore them. Several agencies like the state government have pumped in money to carry out research in the department.

Between 2009 and 2016, the inventory was prepared for the first time. 

Many of the specimens were restored and properly displayed. Attempts were made to convert the old museum into a state of the art one and a veritable cutting edge science and technology centre as a knowledge bank as well as a capacity building exercise.

Ray Banerjee said because of indifference of a section of teachers the area where the fire had broken out was repaired making it impossible for the forensic experts to work. 

As a consequence the cause of the fire would be impossible to find out. It is unfortunate that no one was bothered about the museum and the priceless specimens, she remarked.