Kolkata: Officials on Wednesday said the death toll in a fire that tore through the upper floors of an old, multi-storey building in Kolkata has risen to 24, including two who jumped to their deaths as onlookers began to crowd the area.
City fire chief Gopal Bhattacharjee said officials had earlier put the death toll in Tuesday's fire at six, but as firefighters entered the building at around midnight they found 13 more bodies inside.
City Police Commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakraborty said hours later that police and firefighters found five more bodies, taking the death toll to 24.
About 20 people were injured in the fire in the eastern Indian city.
Police are investigating the cause of the blaze which was believed to have started in an elevator.
Nearly 100 fire fighters battled for five hours to douse the fire that reportedly started in an elevator on Tuesday. An electrical fault is suspected to have caused the fire.
Ardhendu Sen, the state home secretary, said that two people jumped to their death from the building, while four succumbed to burn injuries in a hospital.
Twenty people were hospitalised, five of them in critical condition, Sen told The Associated Press.
Thousands crowded the area as fire fighters used ladders to rescue dozens of people trapped inside. Smoke and dense fire bellowed from the fourth floor upward.
The eight-storey Stephen Court, which houses the popular Peter Cat restaurant and is close to the iconic Flurys tea room, is 150 years old.
"I saw two desperate people, unable to bear the soaring heat and fumes, cling on to the edge of the balcony and then jump to their death from the sixth floor," said Rupa Ghosh, eyewitness to the fire tragedy in Kolkata's Park Street.
A 50-year-old employee of the OTS Transport Co, with its office on the second floor of Stephen Court, jumped one floor below when it seemed as if the fire would engulf her as well.
"I could hear the clattering of broken glasses in the upper floors. It seemed that the building would collapse. The fumes were choking. I found it difficult to breath. I looked down and saw a huge crowd had gathered. I knew I had to get out of this," she said.
"I jumped first on the roof of first floor shops. Then I screamed and cried pleading with the fire brigade to rescue me. But they did not. After a long wait, a ladder was provided and I came down," she said.
The central Kolkata resident was lucky. She was unhurt.
But a few of her colleagues were not. Manoj Ganguly, Shampa Chowdhury and Kajal Nath were in hospital with fractures in both their lower limbs. Some were injured in their arms.
"Around 1.15 pm we first sensed a burning smell. First we did not pay heed as a fire had broken out last year also. Then when the stench increased, we came to the balcony and found the two top floors in flames," Ghosh said at Kolkata's SSKM Hospital where her colleagues were admitted.
Ghosh complained that the fire brigade arrived very late. "They only came at 2.30 pm. But they were unable to rescue people as they had not brought any high ladder. The ladder came at only at 3.15."
Fiery past
The Park Street blaze on Tuesday is the third big fire in Kolkata in the last two years that has resulted in huge loss of property and several injuries.
The fire that broke out in a landmark multistorey building in the heart of Kolkata's downtown Park Street follows two major fires, one of them in Burra Bazar in 2008.
The city's biggest wholesale market was destroyed in that fire that resulted in losses worth millions of rupees affecting almost 2,500 shops.
There was also a huge fire in a slum near the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass on March 5 this year when over 100 shanties were gutted.
