Stephen Court fire toll rises to 34

The toll in the Stephen Court fire here on Sunday rose to 34 as one more body was found under the rubbles in the fifth floor of the fire-raged building.

Fire brigade sources said the decomposed body was recovered from under the debris in the fifth floor and it has been sent to the SSKM Hospital for postmortem.

“The charred body is beyond recognition and we cannot say even whether it is male or female,” the sources said.

Meanwhile, a family from Jharkhand has lodged a complaint with the police, saying a member of it has been missing from Tuesday, the day the fire broke out.

The family said in the complaint lodged on Saturday night that Vineet came to the city to appear in an examination at Stephen Court on that day and did not return.

Following this complaint, the number of missing persons relating to the fire rose to three.

“There is every possibility that some bodies are still there under the debris. But the condition of the bodies is very very bad. The bodies cannot be pulled out unless the entire debris is cleared,” said a senior police officer.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation workers working round the clock have to be very careful in clearing the debris and that was why it was taking so much time, a KMC official said.

“Nearly 75 per cent of the work of removing the rubble is finished and the rest will be done tonight. So there is a possibility that some bodies might be recovered tonight,” the KMC official said.

To clear the confusion regarding identification of bodies, a notice was put up at the State-run SSKM Hospital yesterday.

According to the notice, 29 bodies had been found of which 16 had been disposed off. Of the 13 remaining, DNA tests have been conducted on four and the same would be done on the remaining nine tomorrow.

Hospital superintendent D. Bhattacharya told PTI that DNA tests generally took time.

Pune blast toll rises to 17

The death toll in the February 13 German Bakery blast here rose to 17 with a 23-year-old woman succumbing to injuries on Friday night, hospital sources said.

The victim, Aditi Jindal, was from Chandigarh and undergoing treatment in Inlaks and Budhrani hospital, sources added.

A 21-year-old Sudanese student Anas AlFatih Suleiman passed away at Jehangir Hospital on February 24. He is the fourth foreigner to die in the blast that rocked the popular eatery in Koregaon Park.

The blast claimed lives of three other foreigners — a 26-year-old Sudanese student Amjad Elgazoli, an Italian woman Nadia Macerini and an Iranian man Sayyed Syed Khani — besides injuring more than 50 people.

Pune blast toll goes up to 16

A 21-year-old Sudanese student succumbed to the injuries he sustained in the February 13 Pune blast, raising the toll to 16, police said here on Wednesday.

The victim — Anaj Alfateh Sulaiman — was in the intensive care unit of the Jehangir Hospital here and breathed his last at 5.15 am on Wednesday, an official said, adding that arrangements were being made to hand over the body to his relatives.

Sulaiman, who was a first year BA student of Pune College, became the fifth foreign national who fell victim to the blast that ripped through the German Bakery in Koregaon Park area.

Presently, 13 people injured in the blast have been undergoing treatment in various city hospitals. Among them the condition of at least four is stated to be critical.

Meanwhile, police have tightened security all over Pune and are enforcing several measures, including prohibition on two-wheeler drivers and pillion riders wearing face masks and scarves.

Death toll rises to three at Park hospital

The death toll in the fire accident in Park hospital at Somajiguda rose to three with another nurse, Respa (25), dying while undergoing treatment at Yashoda hospital on Thursday morning.

A septuagenarian patient, Mangaiah of Suryapet in Nalgonda district, died. Forty-one others — including patients, attendants and hospital employees — were injured when fire broke out in Park hospital on Tuesday morning. Police shifted all the injured to the adjacent Yashoda hospital.

The follwoing night, a female nurse, T. Usha Rani, who had slipped into a coma after having inhaled carbon monoxide during the fire, died while being treated in the hospital. Her colleague, Respa, who too fainted after being caught in the smoke, was put on ventilator.

Doctors declared Respa dead around 10.30 a.m. Hailing from Guntur, she was living at the Old CBI Quarters colony in Khairatabad with her husband, Premchand, an employee of the Country Club.