TN: Major fire in Indian Bank building

Chennai, Nov 12: A major fire broke out on the fifth and sixth floors of the public sector Indian Bank branch at Rajaji Salai here last night.

Police and fire service sources said some documents kept in the two floors and furniture were damaged in the fire caused due to an electrical short circuit.

The loss was only minimal as the details in the documents had already been computerised.

Traffic police personnel, who were on duty on the busy stretch of Rajaji Salai, noticed smoke billowing out of the fifth and sixth floors and alerted the fire service.

About eight fire tenders, using the skylifts, put out the fire after battling hard for nearly two hours.

The fifth and sixth floors houses the Harbour Branch of the bank and offices of the bank's senior executives. The office of the Bank's Chairman and Managing Director M S Sundararajan was located on the sixth floor.

Later, talking to reporters after inspecting the fire ravaged floors, Mr Sundararajan said the floor affected by the fire contained only office records.

Meanwhile, Mr Sundararajan said this morning that the banking services were not affected due to the fire. As the bank had already adopted the Core Banking solution, functioning of none of the more than 550-odd branches in India, were affected.

Even ATMs were functioning as usual, he added.

UNI