In pics: Trading at Kumbh Mela

By PTI

Updated: Friday, February 1, 2013, 12:11 [IST]

Allahabad, Jan 27: Barely two days after a blaze engulfed a tent injuring 19 people, a minor fire broke out on Sunday inside a tent at the ongoing Maha Kumbh congregation due to leakage in a gas cylinder. The blaze was brought under control and there was no report of injury or damage to property, a senior official said.

It was second such incident in a span of two days as on January 25, nineteen people were injured in an inferno in a Kumbh tent.

Sunday's fire broke out in Sector number five of the make-shift city of tents that has come into place for the two-month-long congregation, Sector Magistrate Bhairo Deen Gupta told PTI. The magistrate said occupants of the 'pandal', which had caught fire, acted swiftly and covered the leaking gas cylinder with fire even as some of them began efforts to douse the flames while others alerted the administration. Fire engines were pressed into service and the blaze was soon controlled, he said.

"Nobody was hurt in the fire nor was there any massive damage to property. The tent, inside which the cylinder was kept, was however destroyed," the officer said. The incident, which came on the bathing festival day of 'Paush Poornima' when the influx of visitors to the Kumbh area is greater than usual, evoked memories of the January 25 fire incident which had taken place in Sector 11, barely a few hundred meters from Sector five and was similarly blamed on leakage in gas cylinder.

Some of the people injured in the January 25 fire incident are undergoing treatment in a critical condition and eight of them have been sent to the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi.