FIR registered against three in connection with fire at BBMP quality control laboratory

BENGALURU: An FIR has been registered against three BBMP officials at the Halasur Gate police station in connection with the major fire that broke out in the quality control laboratory of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) at its headquarters on Friday.

Nine BBMP officials suffered burn injuries in the incident. The BBMP chief engineer B S Prahalad filed a complaint against three officials, including  AEEs Anand and Swamy, and clerk Suresh, and further investigation is under way.

The incident occurred while testing stocked benzene, which burst into flames due to a leak in the oven box. Palike Chief Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath has referred the incident for a technical inquiry.

Negligence is said to have caused the fire to break out in the lab in which chemical elements were stored for checking the quality of bricks and asphalt samples.

The staff was conducting tests using benzene, when it suddenly exploded. More importantly, there was a lack of precautionary equipment to extinguish the fire. The staffers were not wearing any safety gloves or aprons while conducting the tests in the lab.

BBMP chief engineer Pralhad said, “The two AEEs were in a meeting on the upper floor and had asked clerk Seresh to conduct a test. This is negligence. An FIR has been filed against three of them. We are conducting an internal inquiry at the BBMP. It is clear that it is failure of AEEs and I will submit a report to the commissioner. We will take necessary action after submitting the report.

The chief engineer further said, “We will conduct a site inspection and decide on which engineer should be present at that time. Suresh had internal chemical training, but did not take proper precautions, due to which the explosion occurred. We have filed a police complaint to find out what the mistakes and failures were. I have been assessing the incident to determine whether it was due to negligence or intentional. There was no conspiracy behind the incident and no records were damaged. We will conduct an internal investigation and take immediate action”.

One of the accused, Suresh, admitted during questioning by the police that he is not a lab technician but was told to conduct some tests.

Explaining the incident, Suresh said, “I and Anand were testing some samples. It caught fire suddenly while I was working near the stove. We used a powder for dousing the fire and we managed to come out. Anand and a driver tried to put out the fire. The blast took place as water was sprinkled from outside. The benzene is three times more inflammable than petrol, so, this was the mistake. When the flames spread in a fraction of a second, we three ran from the place in panic”.