KOLKATA — Six Indian industrialists were being held in jail Sunday on charges of culpable homicide in the deaths of 92 people who perished Friday in fire at a private hospital owned by the businessmen.
The six business leaders also were charged Saturday with 308 counts of attempted culpable homicide in the aftermath of the early Friday blaze at Advanced Medical Research Institute (AMRI) in Kolkata. They are scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 2.
During the fire, medical staff reportedly abandoned their patients and fled for their lives as smoke and flames swept through the private hospital.
Of the 92 dead, four were medical staffers, officials said, adding that most died of asphyxiation.
Local people said that hospital authorities stopped them from entering the building to rescue people. There were reports that no fire alarms sounded, no fire-extinguishing system deployed and firefighters initially were not allowed to enter the basement.
According to local police, hospital officials had been warned by the fire department in July for not adhering to safety norms.
“We had asked them to clear the basement five months back and had found the fire arrangements inadequate then,” Damayanti Sen, a senior police official in charge of investigating the case, told reporters.
Kalyan Bandopadhyay, a prosecutor for West Bengal state, of which Kolkata is the capital, said the hospital’s smoke alarms were switched off Friday.
“All windows were closed,” he said during Saturday’s preliminary hearing, adding that the basement was crammed with discarded mattresses, wooden boxes, a diesel drum and other flammable materials.
The hospital’s owners — R.S. Goenka and his son, Manish Goenka; S.K. Todi and his son, Ravi Todi; Prashant Goenka; and Dayanand Agarwal — are among some of the most powerful business leaders in West Bengal. They had received lucrative incentives from West Bengal’s previous communist-led government to build and run the hospital.
An investigation into the cause of the fire is continuing.
India’s government announced Friday that victims and their families would receive federal and state compensation for their injuries and losses.
Dr. Kunal Saha, a Indian-born U.S. physician in Ohio, said his organization, People for Better Treatment, would assist victims’ families.
“Unless the government provides imminent and equitable justice, we will move the appropriate court of law for all victims of previous medical negligence at AMRI and those who have died and/or injured in the fire,” he told The Washington Times.
Dr. Saha recently won India’s largest negligence damages case, for his wife’s death during treatment at AMRI in 1998.
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