The Mumbai Police Crime Branch have started analysing CCTV recordings retrieved from the hard disk of the server room in Mantralaya. Sources,however,said of the 102 cameras on the blaze-hit floors,the police have managed to recover feeds from only 86. Recordings have also revealed that the fire started at 2.38 pm,said Crime Branch officers. The police have also started going through the statements recorded in order to recreate the incident. We had tried retrieving feeds of 102 cameras,but lost 16. The hard disk containing the feeds had got compromised because of fire-fighting operations and we tried our best to retrieve the footage, said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Niket Kaushik. He said the police have started analysing the recordings on a micro level. We have gone through the feeds of about 50 cameras. From what we have seen,we can peg the time of the fire at 2.38 pm based on CCTV recordings. Most of the cameras,whose feeds we have gone through,were installed on the fourth floor,where the fire seems to have started. All these cameras were at the common places on the floor and hold the key to how the blaze started, he said. Crime Branch sources said the recordings show smoke emanating from the fourth floor after the fire started and people who were the first respondents to the fire. Kaushik said the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) has still not got back to the Crime Branch about the possible cause of fire. Till Wednesday evening,the Crime Branch had recorded statements of 132 people. These comprise victims,maintenance staff,employees and members of the public who had come for official work, said Kaushik. Statements of ministers or bureaucrats have not been recorded,sources said. There are four fire-fighters who are stationed at all times in Mantralaya in two shifts. We will be speaking to them as well to know what actually happened, added Kaushik.
