Two days after an explosion at a firecracker outlet at Pazhayapettai in Krishnagiri killed nine persons and injured 11 others, a special executive magistrate began an inquiry at the accident site on Monday.
Special DRO (SIPCOT Land Acquisition) V. Bhavanandi took charge as the special executive magistrate to investigate into the accident, coinciding with the Union Petroleum Minister’s rebuttal in Parliament of the State government’s preliminary reports of a cylinder blast as a probable cause of the explosion in the firecracker outlet.
On Saturday, an explosion in a building housing a firecracker outlet killed nine persons, including the outlet owner and his family members.
Ravi, the owner of the firecracker outlet that was licensed only to sell firecrackers, was locally called “Bomb” Ravi for his dabbling with country crackers for local festivals that required fireworks. According to some, he had learnt stuffing of chemicals in Sivakasi and had later set up an outlet here for the last three years.
According to a local whose wood works shop was among the many destroyed in the explosion, Ravi was seen making fireworks behind the outlet for which he did not have a permit. “They would borrow tools from my shop and keep it for long. When I go to collect it, I have seen him dabbling with rudimentary explosives. ”Only last month, I told him not to do all this. He said, he was closing down the outlet after Deepavali,” the local said.
The explosion killed Ravi’s son and pregnant daughter.
Daughter of Rajeshwari, a victim who ran an eatery shop three shops away from the firecracker outlet, contested before the magistrate’s inquiry the official claim of cylinder blast as a probable cause of the explosion. “There was not a single burn on my mother’s face, and she died of building collapse,” she told Magistrate Bhavanandi.
The eatery is also where three other young men eating their breakfast were killed. They ran the welding unit adjacent to the firecracker outlet and all the four men had stepped out to eat breakfast at the time of the blast, ruling out any welding works at the time, says a local. One of the men escaped with injuries only because he had stepped out of the eatery to take a phone call.
Earlier in the day, while responding to AIADMK leader M. Thambidurai’s query in Parliament, Union Minister for Petroleum Hardeep Singh Puri claimed “no cylinder was issued to any facility in that area” and that the “factory was in a residential area”.
However, according to a gas distributor, the eatery had two commercial cylinders and a chicken outlet also had a cylinder.
The outlet was in a commercial area, contrary to Mr. Puri’s claims. It was licensed as an outlet and not as a factory.
However, the ‘preliminary claims’ of the local officials have also been contested. “If gas leak from a cylinder at the eatery was the source of the explosion, a fire should have broken out in the hotel. There was no carbon formation anywhere, and the casualties there was because of building collapse. But there was no burns and even the gas stove is intact,” says a gas cylinder distributor, who visited the site. Even the trees abutting the eatery are green, but the coconut trees behind the firecracker outlet are partly burnt, he added, to debunk the theory of the cylinder blast.
