A senior police official investigating the devastating fire near Kolkata that claimed over 20 lives told NDTV, the possibility of extracting any more remains from the destroyed site is over as rescue and search ops are to be closed tomorrow.
"The forensic team is at the spot and will be submitting a detailed report within the next two-three days. There's no chance left to find any other bodies inside. We found one this morning, and that has been sent for postmortem. But tomorrow the search & rescue work will be completed," said the officer to NDTV.
He further confirmed that the warehouse belonged to a decorator's company, which was further sublet to the Momo chain company. Earlier, DG Fire, West Bengal Ranvir Kumar, told the media that no fire audit had been done for the warehouse that turned into a burning coffin in the early hours of Monday morning.
The police today arrested Manager Raja Chakraborty and Deputy Manager Manoranjan Sheet of the Momo company, taking the total arrests to three, with the warehouse owner Gangadhar Das already behind bars. All three are currently in police custody as the investigation continues.
"We received 27 missing diaries in total, out of which 21 have been recovered dead. However, the DNA test will confirm total deaths as multiple skeletal remains could belong to one person," explained the police officer. "There were only three Momo warehouse workers while the rest were engaged with the decorator and belonged to his hometown of Purba Medinipur," he added.
The police have imposed prohibitory orders till 5 pm today to maintain law and order around the incident site. While Leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, led a protest march till Narendrapur police station after a court nod to seek action against the culprits and further corner the Mamata Banerjee government.
