
The price of a day’s work: Inside India’s smouldering industrial death traps
₹950 a day during the peak season. He even helped his relatives and their friends—five people in all—enter the business, getting them work in the Anandapur facility a decade ago. Shaow eventually moved to take up work with another employer in 2024, but they stayed on.On 26 January, a massive fire on the premises gutted a unit owned by Pushpanjali Decorators and the adjacent one, owned by food chain Wow! Momo, killing at least 25 people, among them Shaow’s relatives and their friends.A preliminary investigation found serious lapses at the godown, which had been functioning without a fire clearance certificate.
West Bengal’s fire and emergency services minister Sujit Bose told the media in the aftermath of the incident that the godown did not even have fire extinguishers.Shaow remembers the living arrangements during the years he spent at the facility. “We knew that if there was a fire, none of us would survive. There were workers of six to seven thekedars (contractors) who would stay there, at least 300 people,” he says.Gobindo Ghosh lost his neighbour in the fire.
He says it has been heartbreaking to watch the man’s wife and three-year-old daughter try to cope with the loss. “She keeps running around every day. Where is justice? There is still no clarity on the investigation,” says Ghosh.Three people were arrested in connection with the Kolkata fire.
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