Ghaziabad: Owner of factory where eight died after blast arrested

GHAZIABAD: The owner of the illegal factory, where an explosion killed seven women and a minor boy on Sunday, has been arrested
Villagers in Modinagar said Nitin Chaudhury would earlier run a factory manufacturing reels of thread and started the business of making birthday sparklers after coming in contact with one Wasim, who provided him with raw material, including explosives.
Devpal Singh, the SHO of Modinagar police station, said Nitin had told investigators that Wasim had a 50% stake in his business. “A police team was sent to Wasim’s Farukhnagar address but he had fled the spot,” he added. “The building from where the illegal factory operated is owned by Chaudhury. He has been running this illegal business for the past 8-9 months,” Singh said.
Police said two bodies had been wrongly identified on Sunday as they were charred beyond recognition. Two teenage girls, Ishu and Parul, who were missing after the explosion, were added to the tally instead of Jago and Laxmi, who were wrongly identified. Likewise, the minor boy who was among the eight killed on Sunday was identified as Akshit.
SP (rural) Neeraj Kumar Jadaun said, “The two women, who were earlier counted among the dead, were rushed to a hospital in Meerut. We came to know about them later.”
District magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey said the families of the deceased were handed a cheque of Rs 4 lakh each, while a recommendation had been sent to the state government for giving Rs 50,000 to each of the injured.
Pandey said ADM (administration) Santosh Kumar Vaishya had been handed the responsibility of conducting a magisterial inquiry into the blast and submit a report within 15 days.