A day after a major fire had broken out at a chemical factory in Bengaluru's Bapujinagar near Hosaguddadahalli in West Bengaluru, the three owners of the factory were arrested by the Bengaluru Police in connection with the fire. 

The incident that took the fire department took more than six hours to douse the fire, incurred huge loss of properties at chemical units of Rekha Chemicals and Rekha Chemical corporation valued more than Rs 3 crore. Nearly 64,000 litres of highly inflammable 16 types of chemicals were stored in more than 320 barrels in the factory.

Fire breaks out at chemical factory in Bengaluru's Bapuji Nagar; 3 fire tenders rushed

Why were the factory owners arrested? 

The three owners, Sajjan Raj, 66, Kamala, 60, and Anil Kumar, 30 were arrested:

  • Conducted business from a populated residential locality.
  • Did not obtain permission from Karnataka Pollution Control Board, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and Fire and Emergency Service departments.

Deputy Commissioner of the Police West division, Sanjeev M. Patil said that Sajjan Raj had been into the Chemical supplies business for nearly three decades in the name of Rekha Chemicals and his wife Kamala is the owner of Rekha Chemicals Corporations. 

How did the fire accident occur? 

The police said that the fire broke out when one of their employees was transferring chemicals from one barrel to the other. "As these chemicals are highly inflammable while transferring chemical produced static charge due to the hot sunny day. The fire of this magnitude broke out," the police claimed.

Preliminary investigations by the police further revealed that the fire broke out and went out of control as adjoining godown had stored large quantities of plastic materials.

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