A fire accident at the head office of Yavatmal District Central Cooperative Bank Limited (YDCCB) gutted the documents, computers and furniture at around 2 a.m. on Thursday, a bank officer said.
The fire broke out on the first floor of the main building of the bank and the watchman on duty, who noticed the flames, immediately contacted the fire brigade and senior bank officials.
More than 40 computers, old documents and furniture were gutted and process is on to ascertain the exact damage, YDCCB chief officer Aravind Deshpande said.
Two sections – agriculture and banking – suffered most of the damage, Mr. Deshpande said, adding documents dating back to more than 10 years ago were gutted. Fire tenders reached the spot and doused the flames, he said.
Mr. Deshpande claimed a short-circuit caused the blaze. However, this could not be verified from the fire brigade officials.
“Our data centre is safe and hence the functioning of the bank won’t be affected,” Mr. Deshpande said, adding data from YDCCB’s branches can be brought together to reconstruct the documents lost in the inferno.
“Banking operations were carried out today as usual on the ground floor which was unaffected,” Mr. Deshpande added.
