Mystery shrouds over the incident of fire at a highrise garments building at high rise garments factory building at Mirpur area in the city early Thursday that left eight people including the owner of the factory and an Additional Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of police killed. The fire broke out on the second floor of Tung Hai Sweater Factory, housed in the 11-storey building near Mirpur Bangla College, on the Darussalam Road at around 11:30 pm, and immediately engulfed the immediate upper before fire brigade fought the blaze under control within two hours.
The additional DIG was identified as ZA Morshed. The managing director of the factory, Mahbubur Rahman, who was also a director of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), was among the eight killed in the blaze.
The other victims were identified as Rahman’s three friends — Comilla district Juba League president Sohel Mostafa Swapan, Emdadur Rahman Badal and Syed Nasim Reza — the DIG’s bodyguard Ripon Chakma, and Tung Hai office assistant Mohammad Sahabuddin. Another person, identified as a painter, died after he was brought to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), Khalilur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Darussalam police station, told The Independent.
This is the first time that owner of a factory and his close associates and partners were victim of such tragedies engulfing the country’s garments sector over the recent years.
Maj. Mohammad Mahboob, director (operations and maintenance) of fire services and civil defence, told The Independent, “The fire broke out at the factory around 11:30pm. On receiving information, 13 fire-fighting units rushed to the spot and tamed the flames after about one-and-a-half hours of frantic efforts, at around 1:45am.”
Factory general manager Jamedur Rahman said the victims were having a meeting on the ninth floor of the building when the fire broke out. He said Morshed and Rahman were close friends and Morshed, in plainclothes, had come to visit Rahman. The additional DIG went to the factory in a Pajero car.
Fire-fighter sources said that when the blaze broke out, the victims tried to come out of the factory from the ground floor, but could not as the fire was very dense. Later, they tried to go to the roof of the factory, but could not as it was locked. They became senseless after inhaling the thick smoke and suffocated. Morshed Hasan, an on-duty doctor at the emergency department of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and Hospital (NICDH), said the five were brought there but four of them, including the factory’s managing director and the police official, were declared dead on arrival. Another succumbed to his injuries later. The three other injured were rushed to Dhaka Medical Collage Hospital, where they succumbed to their injuries, hospital sources said.
Mohammad Borhanuddin, a security guard of the factory, said it was closed when the fire broke out and most of the workers had left the factory around 7pm. An electrical overhauling was being carried out at the storehouse of the factory after it was closed. He expressed his suspicion that the fire might have originated there.
-With The Independent input
