At Least 7 Killed In Blast At Firecracker Factory In Bengal

At least seven persons were killed and several others injured in a blast at a firecracker factory in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district on Sunday morning, police said.

The explosion happened around 10 am when several people were working at the factory in Nilgunj's Moshpole in Duttapukur police station area, around 30 km north of Kolkata, they said. Those injured have been admitted to a nearby hospital, he said.

"District police officials told me that seven or eight people died and five to six people were injured. I will visit the spot. Firecrackers were stocked in the building in which the explosion took place. This is not an area where crackers were made. The main manufacturing hub was the Narayanpur area of Nilgunj which is far away from here. Police had shut down all the cracker units at Narayanpur," Hindustan Times quoted Rathin Ghosh, state food minister and legislator, as saying.

According to locals, the factory was illegally operated and the explosion took place inside the two-storey house around 10.40 am. The impact of the blast was such that not only did the house turn into a heap of rubble, but some neighbouring concrete houses were also damaged.

Police said they suspect that several people are still stuck under the rubble.

Meanwhile, the leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP alleged that the state has turned into the storehouse of powder kegs.

"There is no monitoring of illegal activities by the police. These firework units are patronised by local TMC leaders," he alleged.

TMC Rajya Sabha MP Santanu Sen told PTI that the state government has formed a SIT (Special Investigation Team), which busted several such illegal firework units in the last few months.

"If there are some units still functioning illegally, those will also be busted soon," he said.

Sen said that at times action against such firework units also invites the ire of locals as thousands of people depend on them for livelihood. "But we are firm in wiping out the menace of illegal fireworks." Locals ransacked the house of one of the owners of the Duttapukur factory following the blast.

The chairman of firework makers' association 'Sara Bangla Atash Bazi Unnayan Samity' Babla Roy said banned high-decibel 'chocolate bombs' or firecrackers were being manufactured at the illegal factory.

In a similar incident in May, twelve people were killed at an illegal firecracker factory in Purba Medinipur district's Egra.