Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Sunday said he spoke to Delhi CM Rekha Gupta over phone regarding the arrest of Keshav Negi, a cook and an Uttarakhand native in connection with the fire at a bed-and-breakfast facility in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar on Wednesday that killed 21 people.
Dhami said he sought a fair and impartial investigation into the case.
“Today I spoke with the CM of Delhi, Rekha Gupta, regarding the arrest of Keshav Negi of Uttarakhand in the Malviya Nagar fire incident in Delhi,” he said.
Dhami said that Gupta assured him that no innocent person would face injustice and that the investigation would be based solely on facts and evidence.
“Rekha Gupta assured me that no injustice will be allowed to happen to any innocent person and that the investigation will be based solely on facts and evidence. I have full faith that the Delhi government and the relevant agencies will bring out the truth through an impartial investigation,” he said.
The CM also spoke with Negi’s daughter, Kanishka Negi, and assured her of all possible assistance from the state government.
“Our government stands shoulder to shoulder with all the migrant Uttarakhandi brothers and sisters living across the country,” he said.
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Meanwhile, senior Congress leader and former CM Harish Rawat questioned the arrest of the cook and alleged that the real culprits behind the tragedy were being shielded.
“This is not about a young man from Uttarakhand, it is about the fire at the Flourish Stay hotel in Malviya Nagar and those actually responsible for it. The owner, management and others accountable for safety lapses should have been held responsible,” Rawat said in his post on Facebook.
He alleged that fixing responsibility on a cook raised serious questions about the investigation.
“You are blaming a chef today. Tomorrow, will you blame a table boy or another employee? Justice demands that responsibility be fixed where actual accountability lies. This appears to be an attempt to shield influential individuals by blaming a chef,” Rawat said.
He added that his stand was not based on Negi’s Uttarakhand origin. “Even if this man was from Jharkhand or any other state, I would have stood by him,” Rawat said.
Delhi police arrested Negi (65), on Saturday, a magistrate court later remanded him to two days’ police custody.
According to police, Negi, who had been working as a cook at the establishment for over a year, told investigators that he was cooking in the ground-floor kitchen around 8.30am on Wednesday when he saw a spark in a fryer, which subsequently caught fire.
However, Negi’s counsel told the Saket court that the blaze was caused by an electrical short circuit elsewhere in the building and not in the kitchen, as alleged by the police.
Negi was arrested a day after the detention of Lovkesh Bajaj, owner of Flourish Stay. Both have been booked under charges including culpable homicide not amounting to murder, negligent acts endangering human life and mischief by fire at Malviya Nagar police station.
