No respite to Mumbai from fire; three more incidents reported
Mumbai: Three fire incidents were reported since Monday midnight, said a senior fire brigade official, adding to a string of such cases since December 29 when an inferno killed 14 people in a pub here.
However, no casualty was reported in the latest incidents, said the official.
A fire broke out just past midnight in a shop in a chawl in Dockyard Road, Byculla, he said.
"Six fire engines and water tankers were rushed to the spot and they doused the flames in less than two hours (by 2 am)," he said, adding no one was injured.
In the second incident, the fire brigade control room received a call at 10 am about a fire in a ground plus three- storey residential apartment on Juhu Tara Road in suburban Vile Parle.
"Fire brigade personnel immediately rushed to the spot and put out the blaze within 25 minutes," the official said, adding no one was injured.
The third incident was reported in the evening from Amboli Naka in Andheri (West) where a bamboo godown went up in flames, he said.
The blaze was reported at 5.37 pm and five fire engines were rushed to the spot, he said.
"The fire at the bamboo godown has been brought under control," the official said, adding no casualty was reported.
The cause of the fire at all the three places was not yet known.
The financial capital has been hit by a string of fire incidents in the last fortnight.
The deadliest of them was on December 29 when a devastating inferno killed 14 people at an upscale pub in the Kamala Mills Compound.
On January 4, four persons, including two children, were killed and five others seriously injured after an upper floor of a residential building in suburban Marol caught fire.
A 20-year-old man, who worked for a television serial production unit, was killed in a fire at the Cine Vista film studio in suburban Kanjurmarg on January 6.
Yesterday, a fire broke out is the sessions court building in south Mumbai in which some official records were gutted.
Earlier on December 18, 12 labourers were killed in a massive blaze at a snack-making unit in Saki Naka-Kurla.
As the metropolis battles frequent blazes, the fire department urged people and commercial establishments to take preventive measures to avoid such tragedies.
"Safety measures are a must to avoid such incidents.
Apart from taking preventive steps, people should be alert and immediately inform the department about such incidents," said Deputy Chief Fire Officer Kailash Hivrale.
People should keep a watch on electrical wiring in residential buildings and commercial outlets, he said.
Meanwhile, BJP Member of Parliament Kirit Somaiya visited three film and TV studios after the fire at Cine Vista.
He said these studios, located in Kanjurmarg and Bhandup, don't have proper fire fighting systems in place.
"Today, I visited three film and TV studios and found they don't have fire safety systems in place. I told this to the municipal commissioner and demanded strong action against these studios," said the Mumbai North-East MP.
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Kerala: ED files money laundering case in Sabarimala gold loss case
Thiruvananthapuram/New Delhi (PTI): The Enforcement Directorate on Friday filed a money laundering case in the Sabarimala gold loss case in Kerala, official sources said.
The federal probe agency's Kochi zonal office has registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), an ED equivalent of a police FIR, under various sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), they said.
The politically sensitive case is already being investigated by a state special investigation team (SIT) under the supervision of the Kerala High Court.
In December, the high court had allowed the ED to undertake an independent investigation into the case after it dismissed objections raised by the SIT against sharing the case information with the central agency.
The SIT is probing two cases related to the gold loss incident and has arrested 11 people so far. The latest to be arrested by the SIT was Kandararu Rajeevaru, the chief priest of the Lord Ayyappa temple.
The other prominent persons arrested in the case by the SIT are Bengaluru-based businessman and prime accused Unnikrishnan Potty and former Travancore Devaswom Board president A Padmakumar.
The ED is expected to soon look for more evidence, question the accused, and it may also go on to attach certain assets of those involved if it finds that they generated "proceeds of crime", according to the officials.
The probe is related to a series of irregularities, including official misconduct, administrative lapses and a criminal conspiracy to misappropriate the gold from the various artefacts of the Lord Ayyappa shrine.
The investigation by the SIT, and now by the ED, is related to the loss of gold from the gold-cladded copper plates of the Dwarapalaka (guardian deity) idols and the door frames of the Sreekovil (sanctum sanctorum) of the temple.
The SIT has informed the High Court that its probe found "a series of serious official misconduct and administrative lapses on the part of the Devaswom officials right from the initial correspondence till the handing over of the door frame plates, connected plates, Dwarapalaka plates and pillar plates to Unnikrishnan Potty without proper authorisation".
It further said in its statement that Govardhan, Pankaj Bhandari, the CEO of Chennai-based Smart Creations, which carried out the electroplating of the artefacts from the temple, Potty and the other accused hatched a criminal conspiracy with malicious intention to misappropriate the gold cladded on the copper plates in and around the shrine.
"It is found during the investigation that all these criminal activities were part of a large conspiracy and an organised crime committed by the accused persons.
"They had a larger plan to dismantle other gold-clad items on the Sabarimala Sreekovil and to extract the gold from them for misappropriation," it said.
