AMRI directors sent to police custody
Source: The Sangai Express / (Agencies)

Kolkata, December 10 2011: All seven directors of the fire-ravaged AMRI Hospital have been sent to police custody till December 20.The directors were produced in court earlier today.

The directors, Radhe Shyam Goenka, Prashant Goenka, Manish Goenka, Shrawan Kumar Todi, Ravi Todi, Dayanand Aggarwal and Radhe Ahyam Aggarwal, had voluntarily surrendered to the police yesterday and were later arrested for culpable homicide and negligence.

Civic authorities on Saturday also sealed two blocks of the hospital.

Meanwhile, a small fire was also reported from the basement of the hospital.

A fire engine stationed at the hospital doused the fire.

In all 90 people, most of them patients in sleep, were yesterday choked to death in the fire suspected to have been caused by inflammable material stored in the basement of a multi-speciality private hospital.

Authorities handed over majority of the bodies to their relatives.

The postmortem of 87 of the total 90 who were choked to death due to the fire yesterday was completed last night and the autopsy of the rest three would be done during the day, police said.

The police, however, did not give the number of bodies handed over to their families.

Family members of 65 year-old Bangladesh resident Gouranga Mondal, who was among the victims, had reached the morgue to receive his body.

Mondal's body would be flown to his country, the police, however, said.

The body of a resident of Tripura would also be handed over to his family today.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has already cancelled the licence of the hospital on the charge of gross negligence and lapse.

A few patients are, however, still inside the old block of the hospital which was unaffected in the blaze.

Their worried relatives waited outside as there were no doctors or nursing staff to provide any treatment or attend to them.

The number of patients in the old block was not provided by the police or the hospital authorities.

Kottayam: Two young bravehearts from Kerala, who were nurses in the fire-ravaged AMRI Hospital in Kolkata, reportedly saved eight patients before their own lives were snuffed out while trying to rescue another victim.

Remya and Vineetha, both 24 pulled out eight of the nine patients in the noxius smoke-filled female ward and when they had gone up to save the ninth patient, who had suffered a fracture, succumbed to the smoke and heat, said Sumini, the Deputy Nursing Superintendent.

In fact, even as she was engaged in the valiant rescue effort, she had called up her home from Kolkata in the wee hours yesterday and spoken to her mother who had little inkling that this would be the last time she would hear her daughter.

She told her mother that the hospital was filled with thick smoke and fume and it was very difficult for her to breathe, a close relative here said.

In fact, before she completed the talk the telephone line got disconnected.

Later,it was another nurse from Kolkata who informed Remya's relatives that she was one of the two Malayali nurses who perished in the fire.

Vineetha hailed from a poor family also from Kottayam.

She had joined AMRI hospital just two months back after quitting a hospital in Chandigarh.

Remya's father,a daily wager earner, died before she completed her nursing course.

It was with great difficulty that her mother and brother supported her to complete the course.

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