IOC fire: 5 held, sent to 6-day remand

A local court on Friday sent five IOC officials to six days' police remand. The Ichhapore police had arrested them late on Thursday.

The arrested include three suspended IOC officials and two security guards. They have been charged with criminal negligence for causing death of three workers after a fire broke out at IOC's Hazira terminal on January 5.

As per details, the fire had broken out with blast in petrol tank number 4. Four workers were reportedly working on it when the accident occurred.

The fire fighters of Surat Municipal Corporation battled for 36 hours and controlled the blaze. Bodies of three workers were identified as Janardhan Chaudhary (35) of Bihar, Rahul Nagar (20) of Uttar Pradesh, Devendra Giri (34) of Vadodara. While another worker identified as Ravi Swai of Orissa is still missing.

The IOC had faced loss of petrol and infrastructure worth Rs 45 crore, officials said.

The IOC authorities had suspended three of its officials — Prashant Pandey (Terminal Manager), Vyomesh Dengre (Assistant Engineer) and Anurag Chandak (Assistant Engineer), a couple of days ago.

Icchapore police investigating the fire incident arrested the three suspended IOC officials and two security officials identified as Jaspal Singh Gajraj Singh (security supervisor) and Birendra Sengre (security guard).

Icchapore Police Inspector S M Patel said, "We have arrested the five suspects out of which three are IOC officers working at its Hazira terminal and two are security guards.

We will produce them in court for obtaining remand as we need to get more information from them."

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