Around two weeks after two women died following a fire at a spa in Surat, the fire department in the city sealed 119 commercial premises, including hospitals, hotels, restaurants, gyms, and spa centres, for want of a fire licence and other discrepancies late on Tuesday night.
The officials have written to electricity providers Torrent power and DGVCL (Dakshin Gujarat Vij Company Limited) and Surat Municipal Corporation to cut off power and water supply, respectively, at the establishments concerned.
On Monday and Tuesday, the civic body carried out surprise checks at various gyms, spa centres, hospitals, hotels and restaurants in the city. As per details provided by the Surat fire department, fire officials of different zones sealed 119 premises in the city on Tuesday night.
The officials had also issued notices to 23 commercial establishments who had fire safety equipment but they were not up to the mark.
Surat Chief Fire Officer Basant Pareek said, “We have been issuing notices and sealing the premises, which do not follow norms. Once they gave us a guarantee in writing, we unsealed the premises. But despite that, many failed to follow the norms and two notices were sent out to the owners of the firms concerned. Taking strict actions against them, we have written to the Torrent Power Company and DGVCL along with water department officials of SMC to cut off their connections until they fulfill the fire norms. We have directed our teams to continue surprise checks in the coming days.”
On November 6, two women from Sikkim – Benu Limboo (30) and Manisha Damai (33) — had died of asphyxiation after a fire broke out at a spa functioning out of a gym premises at Shivpuja complex on City Light Road.
Surat police had filed a case against gym owner Shahnawaz Mistry and spa owner Dilshad Khan and arrested them under culpable homicide. Another person named in the FIR, Shahnawaz’s partner Vasim Mistry, is still absconding.
During investigations, it was found that the gym and spa owners had not availed the fire NOC.
