LUCKNOW: The Lucknow Police on Tuesday arrested the owners of Hotel Levana Suites, Rahul Agarwal and Rohit Agarwal, along with the general manager, Sagar Srivastava, on charges of culpable homicide (causing death without the intention of murder) and causing death due to negligence.
The trio were produced before a local CJM court and sent to 14-day judicial custody.
Four guests died while 11 were injured in a major fire that originated from the banquet hall of the hotel. The FIR was lodged by senior sub-inspector Dayashankar Dwivedi against Pawan Agarwal, Rahul Agarwal, Rohit Agarwal and Sagar Srivastava.
In the FIR, Dwivedi said that around 7am, a fire broke out in the hotel in which four guests died and seven were admitted to SPM Civil Hospital in Hazratganj.
He claimed that the owners and the manager of the hotel had made no arrangements of fire safety and the electricity supply was also faulty.
Dwivedi said that cooking gas cylinders were stored in the hotel in an inappropriate manner and there was no mechanism for proper ventilation in the entire building.
“There was no mechanism to combat fire emergencies in the hotel,” he said.
The FIR categorically mentions that the windows in the rooms of the hotel had thick iron grills due to which the windows could not be opened and firemen conducting rescue operations had to face many hardships.
A special team of the UP fire department, which began a probe into the cause of the hotel fire, also visited the spot. A senior officer privy to the probe said that the first aspect of the investigation was to find out if the firefighting systems were working or not and if the hotel had any fire safety exit.
Another officer in the team said they were also looking into the reasons for the fire. “Prima facie, it appears that the fire broke out in the server room due to a short-circuit at the end of the second floor,” he said.
Lucknow divisional commissioner Roshan Jacob told TOI that reports from forensic and fire enquiry reports were awaited.
