In Shapar godown too, welding sparked blaze

Rajkot: Exactly like the Gondal warehouse fire, where groundnut worth Rs 35 crore was gutted, the investigation in May 5 fire in Shapar-Veraval godown, was also caused due to a welding spark.
CID (crime), which was handed over the probe in the fire, has concluded that welding work being carried out near a shade led to the blaze that gutted 28,000 groundnut bags each weighing 35 kg worth Rs four crore. The construction of new shade was being carried out near-by, it is claimed.

. The welding was being done on the the instruction of warehouse owner Narendra Patel. Sources also claimed that there was no electricity connection in the warehouse but a team of PGVCL has found that an illegal electricity connection was taken from nearby warehouse. Four of the total eight shades were gutted.

However, questions are being raised against NAFED, the government-designated agency to procure groundnut at minimum support price, as no lessons were learnt from the Gondal incident.

Opposition Congress has raised the question of quality of groundnut that was gutted.