The death toll in the SUM Hospital fire mishap mounted to 26 with the death of one more patient on Saturday morning.
The deceased was identified as Kartikeswar Das, a resident of GGP Colony at Rasulgarh in Bhubaneswar, who had been shifted to the Apollo Hospital after the fire broke out at the SUM Hospital on Monday evening that killed 19 persons on that night itself.
Meanwhile, the Capital Hospital authorities submitted the postmortem reports of the bodies of the first 19 patients of the SUM Hospital to the Commissionerate police on Saturday too.
“The postmortem reports confirm their deaths due to asphyxiation. There are no burn injuries on their bodies,” said Commissioner of Police YB Khurania. He said the reports contained the circumstances surrounding the death of the people which would help them in the fire incident probe process.
In another development on Saturday, as part of their investigation, police interrogated IMS and SUM Hospital Dean Gangadhar Sahoo and Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) University Vice-Chancellor Amit Banerjee about the mishap.
“A number of teams is engaged in the investigation process and various people are being interrogated and their statements are being recorded. Today, the Dean
and the VC of the university were questioned. Our main focus is now to understand their organisational structure and process of decision making at various levels and to find out the persons who used to process files regarding the fire mishap such as NOC, etc.,” said Khurania.
The questioning of the two senior officials of the institute was done on the second and last day of the police remand period of SUM Hospital owner Manoj Ranjan Nayak.
On the other hand, Nayak’s wife Saswati Das, who was called for interrogation, is yet to appear before police.
“One of the trustees (Manoj Nayak) has been arrested and is in police remand now. It will be a prolonged investigation and will take some time. The lookout Circular issued against Saswati Das, another trustee and the wife of Nayak, is still in force as she has not appeared before the police as yet despite summons for interrogation,” said Khurania.