The charred body of a person was found on Thursday evening in the gutted debris on the third floor of the four-storeyed building near Raj Bhavan that caught fire on Wednesday.
Police identified the person as Shyam Sundar Saha, 66, a resident of Agarpara, on the northern fringes of the city, who worked as a help in one of the offices in the building, Saraf Agencies.
The body was found on Thursday evening when personnel from the Disaster Management Group and the fire department were searching through the burnt remains.
“A family arrived outside the building on Thursday morning and said one of their members who worked in Saraf Agencies was missing. The family did not lodge any missing diary,” said an officer.
“We received information from a company that one of their former employees who was working even after his retirement had been missing from the site of fire since Wednesday,” said Dinesh Kumar, deputy commissioner of police, central.
“They identified the person as Shyam Sundar Saha, 66, a resident of Agarpara. A search was carried out and a charred body was found under the debris today. After careful search, we also found one partially burnt driving licence of a missing person near the body, which helped in the identification.”
A senior officer of the central division of Kolkata police said that since a body has been recovered, an unnatural death case would be registered against unknown persons.
The four-storeyed building that caught fire on Wednesday is a stone’s throw from Raj Bhavan. After the blaze was reported, governor C.V. Ananda Bose stepped out of Raj Bhavan and watched the firemen work till the flames were doused.
An official in the fire department said the body was found in the interior portion of the third floor, which was inaccessible to the firefighters on Wednesday.
The entire false ceiling of the top floor had collapsed, making it difficult for the firefighters to figure out the layout of the offices.
“Our men had been dampening the third floor the entire night to cool it down. But smoke was coming out even late on Wednesday, making it impossible for the men to search through the debris,” said a senior officer of the state fire and emergency services.
Fire department officials told The Telegraph on Thursday they were yet to ascertain who was the owner of the building.
Fire
A fire broke out behind a housing complex on Belgachia Road on Thursday afternoon.
A heap of garbage caught fire and it was doused by two fire tenders, police said.
No one was trapped or injured, the police said.