MUMBAI: A major fire broke out at the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office at Kaiser-I-Hind building in Ballard Estate in the early hours on Sunday. The fire was reported to the Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB) at 2.31am and was doused nearly twelve hours later, around 2pm on Sunday. Though no casualties were reported, furniture, computers and documents stored in the office were destroyed in the blaze, fire brigade officials and ED officials told Hindustan Times.
“A preliminary assessment is underway to ascertain if the fire destroyed important documents, records and storage devices linked to cases under investigation,” said an ED official. “But as per our estimate, the damage is likely to be limited as the affected floor was used mostly to store documents pertaining to administrative affairs. It did not house the server on which case records are stored.”
The fire, likely caused by a short circuit, started from the mezzanine linked to the fourth floor, where administrative records are stored. It was confined to the mezzanine and the fourth floor, which houses the offices of several senior officers including the head of its Mumbai zonal unit, said ED sources. Only two security guards were on duty on the ground floor of building when the blaze erupted, the sources added.
“We do not suspect any foul play so far, though the fire brigade and police are still determining the exact cause and extent of damage,” said the ED official quoted earlier.
Prolonged operation
Chief fire officer Ravindra Ambulgekar said poor ventilation had caused the smoke to get clogged inside the building, posing great difficulties to firefighters and prolonging the operation. “The office was closed so we had to break open doors and windows to gain entry,” he said.
After the MFB was intimated about it at 2:31am, it escalated the response in three stages – at 2.46, the fire was identified as level 1, wherein 2-4 fire tenders are required to bring it under control; at 3.30am, it was upgraded to level 2, which requires 4-8 fire tenders; while at 4.17, it was escalated to the highest level, 3, which requires more than eight fire tenders.
The presence of furniture stock in common passages and balconies created significant obstructions for firefighting operations, said fire brigade officials. “We had to break open the windows to ventilate the structure and manage the smoke,” a fire official told HT on condition of anonymity.
In all, 12 fire engines, seven jumbo tankers and two advanced water tankers were pressed into service and the blaze was doused around 2.10pm. Cooling operations were still underway till the time of going to print.
‘Backups in place’
The ED, which specialises in probing cases of money laundering and forex violations, did not release any official statement on Sunday regarding the fire or the damage caused by it. But agency sources said the damage was likely to be limited – firstly because the mezzanine was largely used to store administrative documents, and secondly because records of cases under investigation are always held in reserve.
“We have a robust protocol of keeping scanned copies of important case records, especially charge sheets submitted to PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) courts,” a senior ED officer told HT.
While case-related papers and documents are stored at another ED office in south Mumbai, all officers keep scanned copies of important records on their official laptops, said the officer.
“Besides, scanned records are also available with the PMLA adjudicating authority, which determines if provisionally attached properties are involved in money laundering,” the officer added.
Some agency sources, however, apprehended that the fire could have damaged some case papers stored on the fourth floor, apart from administrative papers stored on the mezzanine. The loss of original case papers would erode their evidentiary value somewhat, though they could be replicated using scanned copies, the sources noted.
The ED’s Mumbai unit has been probing a raft of high-profile money laundering cases in recent years, including the alleged ₹122-crore fraud at the New India Co-operative Bank (NICB), the Fairplay app money laundering case, the ₹12, 500-crore Punjab National Bank fraud involving diamantaires Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi, the ₹5,600-crore National Stock Exchange Limited case and the ₹9,200-crore Kingfisher Airlines bank fraud case.
