A tragic fire at Hotel Bideshini in Tarapith, a temple town in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, resulted in the deaths of nine individuals on Monday. In the aftermath, authorities arrested two people: the hotel owner and his son. The cause of the blaze is currently under investigation as officials work to determine the circumstances surrounding this devastating incident.
While Kalyan was arrested late on Monday night. “We have arrested two persons. Prabir Kumar Pal, the hotel owner and his son Kalyan Pal, who worked as the caretaker. Prabir was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday. Police have registered a suo moto case. In all, nine people, including two children, were killed in the fire. four were from Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri districts in West Bengal While five of the dead were residents of West Garo Hills in Meghalaya. “The hotel’s register was possibly destroyed in the fire as the blaze started near the reception area. So, we don’t know how many guests were there at that time. Some hoteliers managed to escape using pipes and trees. The blaze spread rapidly through decorative and wooden materials inside the hotel, with smoke billowing to the upper floors and trapping several guests in their rooms, they added.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the hotel’s front door access was cut due to the fire in the reception area. At least 34 hoteliers survived. We have identified 43 people, of which nine were killed.
The fire brigade has also lodged a complaint,” said a senior police officer of Birbhum. In the morning we deployed a boat to search the pond to check whether anyone drowned as the pond was right beside the hotel,” said another police officer. The fire broke out around 4am at the reception area on the ground floor of the four-storey hotel, when most of the guests were asleep, according to officials. Emergency exits on each floor were locked and the terrace door was also blocked with plywood, trapping the smoke, a police official said.
