For an hour or so shortly after Thursday midnight, Fire and Rescue Services personnel and residents of a neighbourhood at Chakkaraparambu in Ernakulam district of Kerala were a panicked lot as occupants of a house on fire rented by a family of three, including a one-year-old girl, ‘went missing’.
Two units of Fire and Rescue Services personnel from the Thrikkakara fire station led by assistant station officer Abdul Nazeer rushed to the spot after receiving a call about a fire breakout in the house around 1 a.m. Later, another unit from Gandhi Nagar also joined the rescue work. Though local residents claimed that the occupants were in the house till a while before the blaze was noticed, the firefighters could not find anyone inside.
“By the time we reached, the local residents had almost doused the fire and removed the gas cylinder from the kitchen. Gas stove and properties inside the kitchen were found smashed, while furniture in another room were also smouldering. The residents had told us that a ‘fight’ seemed to have happened in the house as sound of properties being smashed could be heard just before they noticed the fire. However, we could not find anyone inside or outside the house,” said Mr. Nazeer.
It then emerged that the house had been rented by live-in partners and that the man, reportedly around 25 years old, later ‘surrendered’ before the Palarivattom police confessing that he had set the house on fire. Even then, there was no information about the missing woman and the child.
“We gathered the mobile number of the woman and rang her. But the call went unattended. However, we were relieved when the location of her mobile phone was shown as Thrissur, which meant she was not probably in the house when it was set on fire,” said Palarivattom police sources.
The woman eventually attended the call of the police on Friday morning. She declined to appear at the police station stating that she was not married to the man and hence was not responsible for his actions.
Constant bickering
“It turned out that they had been live-in partners for over a year and had rented the house just about a month ago. According to local residents, they were constantly bickering and had little interaction with those in the neighbourhood. She had left the house with the child for Thrissur on Thursday around 11 a.m. after another altercation,” said police sources.
Despondent, the man went on a drinking binge since then and, under the influence of alcohol, set the house on fire, the police said.
The police were yet to register a case since the landlord, who is presently out of station, was yet to lodge a complaint.
