Hotel Golden Parkk fire: Owner, manager remanded to 5-day judicial custody

Owner of Hotel Golden Parkk, Bhupinder Gujral and manager Gautam Majumdar were remanded to judicial custody on Friday.

Police had arrested Gujral and Majumdar on Thursday evening in connection with the fire that led to the death of two persons.

The police had initiated a probe on the basis of the complaint lodged with Shakespeare Sarani police station by the state Fire and Emergency Services department.

Cases under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on charges of punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and various sections of the Fire Act had been initiated against the accused in this connection.

Counsels of the accused pleaded before the court to grant bail to both of them. The state's counsel objected to the bail plea for the sake of investigation. The court thus, remanded both of them to judicial custody for five days.

Both the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the Fire and Emergency Services department have started taking necessary steps to ensure that such incidents do not take place again. Thus, initiatives will be taken to make all hotels in the city follow the set norms to ensure proper firefighting arrangements.

It was pointed out in the preliminary investigation that there were several loopholes in the firefighting arrangements of Hotel Golden Parkk. Though necessary equipment were present in the hotel, they were not used properly used when the fire broke out.

Moreover, the faulty duct of the air-condition led to the death of the two persons as they did not burn to death

but were asphyxiated due to the smoke.

The victims died due to suffocation as the entire hotel was filled with smoke after it passed through the AC ducts that were not properly sealed.

Mayor and the state Fire and Emergency Services minister Sovan Chatterjee had said that stringent steps will be taken if any hotel is

found not following the set norms to ensure proper firefighting system.

On Thursday, after the fire broke out in the hotel, as many as 10 fire tenders were pressed into action and it was due to the alertness of the firefighters that the death toll in the incident did not rise. The firemen quickly responded and evacuated the boarders.