Five shops gutted to ashes in Garzi market under Udaipur subdivision

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, March 20, 2023

A devastating fire , sparked by unknown factors, completely gutted to ashes five shops causing a total estimated loss of around Rs 20 lakhs. Police sources from Udaipur said that the shop keepers had gone home at night leaving their shops locked up . But when they were sound asleep at midnight, they were alerted by neighbours that their shops had caught fire and all of them rushed to the market to see their shops , only means of their livelihood, in a hot inferno. The Fire Brigade vans from Udaipur , duly informed by the affected people, took inordinately long to reach the spot and started trying to douse the fire . But a second Fire- Brigade parked in a nearby place in connection with an ongoing fair had also reached the spot late. Before the fire could be brought under control all five shops were gutted to ashes .

Sources from Udaipur said that , had the Fire Brigade vans reached in time the damage could be minimized. The shop-keepers who suffered huge losses have been identified as Srikanta Bhattacharjee (grocery), Biswajit Das and Nirmal Ghosh (restaurant), Minati Das (stationery) and Swapan Ghosh (sweet shop). It is now known whether the shop-keepers had any fire insurance against damage by fire accident. The bustling Garzi market now wears a deserted and grief-stricken look after last night’s conflagration.