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Journalism of Courage
A day after the Mumbai Fire Brigade recovered two bodies from the Ashapura Industrial Estate in Sakinaka-Kurla industrial area, the search operation for a third missing person yielded no result. The Mumbai Police said the search was called off by Sunday evening.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the fire brigade will now begin to demolish the charred three-storey structure, which housed 30 to 35 godowns. The cause behind the fire is not known yet, but the fire brigade has found illegally stored chemicals in the godown that caught fire.
A major fire was reported at 5.20 pm on Friday, after which the fire brigade rushed nine tenders and seven jumbo tankers to the spot.
Firefighters brought the blaze under control early on Saturday, while cooling operation continued till Saturday night.
It was only after the fire was under control that the partially-burnt bodies of two missing persons, later identified as Aarti Jaiswal (25) and Piyush Pithadiya (42), were recovered from the first floor of the building.
On Friday night, family members of an employee working at one of the godowns approached the Sakinaka police station with a missing person complaint.
The Mumbai municipality is now preparing a list of structures affected by the fire.
“We will probe the nature of business carried out in these structures and also check for violations or negligence. We are trying to ascertain if the godown had a licence to store chemicals/combustible material,” said a civic official from L ward (Kurla).
Fire brigade officials said it took 160 firefighters and 16 fire tenders to douse the flames, which raged for eight hours.
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