Six of a family, tenant hurt in Patna house LPG blast

PATNA: Altogether seven people, including six members of a family, were injured in an explosion inside a two-room flat on the first floor of a four-storey building at Salimpur Ahra under Gandhi Maidan police station in the state capital on Monday. The condition of one of the seriously injured, Gangajali Devi (70), is stated to be critical.
The injured have been admitted to the PMCH with burn injuries. The explosion, which the police claimed was caused due to leakage of gas from an LPG cylinder, left two houses badly damaged. A joint team of the state FSL and the ATS later visited the site and collected evidences from there.
The incident took place around 8am in the densely populated locality, which is hardly 200 metres from the Gandhi Maidan police station. The debris and damaged articles scattered all around bore testimony to the intensity of the explosion. The locals said they heard the explosion sound in a radius of one kilometre.
A police team led by City SP D Amarkesh first reached the spot and inquired about the incident. Later, Patna SSP Upendra Kumar Sharma visited the spot and subsequently went to the PMCH to know about the health condition of the seven injured.
“A small sized LPG cylinder kept in a room yesterday got leaked due to damage in the connecting pipe. The accumulated gas in the room having no ventilation created a shock wave leading to explosion,” the SSP told the media.
He said the cylinder couldn’t explode as it had emptied by the time one of the family members tried to lit fire in the kitchen. In addition, two other empty cylinders kept in the room were found to be intact. “There is no evidence of explosion due to any explosive. This has been confirmed by the forensic experts,” he said, adding that the 2x5 inches thick brick walls erected without use of any ‘saria’ (iron rods) collapsed due to the impact of the explosion.
House owner Nitu Devi said she had rented out the flat to one Baidyanath Mahto, an autorickshaw driver, about three months back. “We had asked him several times to provide the photocopy of his Aadhaar Card or any identity proof, which he deliberated delayed. As he was living in the flat with his family, we couldn’t suspect any foul play,” she added.
Nitu stays with her family in another house and reached there after being informed about the incident.
The injured were identified as Baidyanath Mahto (50), his wife Rekha Devi (45), mother Gangajali Devi (70) and three children, including Tolu, Mahi and Manisha. Rekha told the police that she caught the fire when she had gone to boil the water in a pot in the morning. “What happened later is not known to me as I fell unconscious,” a police officer quoted Rekha as saying.
A tenant, Tarkeshwar Pandey, who lived in an adjacent room, also received injuries in the incident. Pandey’s relative Sandeep said he helped the injured get admitted to the PMCH for treatment.
The neighbouring house of Anil Kumar Singh was also damaged in the incident. His tenant S K Singh said, “The door of the room, in which he was sleeping at the time of the incident, was completely damaged. Even iron grills in the balcony were uprooted and the wall collapsed causing damage to other household articles in the flat.”
However, the local residents gathered there were not ready to buy the police theory of LPG cylinder leakage. “Police officials are hiding the fact and trying to give it a different colour. Many buildings in the neighbourhood felt the tremor caused due to explosion and windowpanes were damaged,” said a local resident Ganga Prasad.
Another building in the same locality was earlier damaged in a similar explosion a few months ago.