‘Mysterious woman’ behind Mahakali Nagar fire elusive

Nagpur: The Beltarodi police seem to be clueless regarding the woman from whose locked house the Mahakali Nagar slum fire on the outskirts is said to have started on Monday rendering almost 100 families homeless, 92 shanties gutted and 36 LPG cylinders exploding.
With no efforts whatsoever to trace the woman in question, the cops have largely remained inconclusive about the cause and origin of the fire even after 24 hours.
While local residents, including neighbours, had unanimously pointed to the woman’s house as the most possible origin of the fire as per their early observations, cops are waiting for some concrete evidence to speak to her to know about the incident prima facie.
The fire department authorities too have forwarded their initial report of the incident with the cause of the fire as ‘unknown’. Chief fire officer Rajendra Uchhke said the investigation has to be done by the police department.
“The police have to find out how the fire started. They need to ascertain whether it was an accident or sabotage,” he said.Though city police chief Amitesh Kumar camped at zonal DCP Noorul Hasan’s office to review the case for several hours, Beltarodi police on the other hand exhausted the entire day to conduct a joint panchanama of the fire with the revenue department at the illegal slums on the encroached land which was earlier the zudpi forest of the revenue department.
Slumlords had taken possession of the land to illegally sell ‘pattas’ to migrant labourers and local slum dwellers.
The CP said teams from the regional forensic science laboratory (RFSL), Maharashtra state electricity distribution company limited (MSEDCL) and LPG cylinder companies are set to visit the affected parts of the slums for scrutiny, assessment and collection of evidence.
“The police are working to zero in on the cause and origin of the fire through technical and logical evidence instead of any hearsay. We are minutely following the issues involved in the fire incident,” he said.
When asked whether cops would allow the illegal slums to be re-built again by encroaching upon the revenue department land, the CP said he would look into the issue.
Meanwhile, several NGOs working on a war-footing rushed to the slums to help the victims most of whom had lost even their last savings. “We don’t even have a spare pair of clothes to change,” a woman resident told TOI on the day of the incident.
Many NGOs like Amarswaroop Foundation and Pulak Manch Pariwar reached out to the slum dwellers with ration kits, clothes and other materials.
Cops from Beltarodi police station under senior PI Chandrakant Yadav, along with the NGOs, too extended help to the helpless slum dwellers.