The Kolkata Police has set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the fire at a government building in Kolkata's Alipore area that destroyed around 4,000 Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
The fire broke out on Wednesday at the administrative building of the South 24 Parganas zilla parishad in Alipore, and the blaze was reported around 9.50 am. Ten fire tenders were pressed into service to bring the fire under control.
Minister of state for fire and emergency services Kaushik Chowdhury raised questions over how the blaze spread to the floors where the machines were stored. Preliminary investigation suggests that the fire started on the third or fourth floor, but how it reached the eighth and ninth floors remains a mystery.
The EVMs were stored on the eighth and ninth floors and were destroyed in the fire. The incident has raised suspicions, with the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) questioning how the fire started and how it reached up to the ninth-tenth floor.
