Police arrest owner of Kalyani firecracker factory where blast killed four

A day after four people died in an explosion at an illegal firecracker factory in Kalyani Rathtala in West Bengal’s Nadia district, police arrested its owner on Saturday (February 8, 2025).

“Police have arrested the owner Khokan Biswas. The investigation is ongoing and will take time,” a senior district police official said on Saturday. Mr. Biswas has been remanded in police custody till February 15. 

According to the police, four people — Ruma Sonar, Bharati Choudhury, Anjali Biswas and Durga Saha — died in the incident. A woman who sustained injuries in the explosion was admitted to the nearby College of Medicine and J.N.M. Hospital.

Police said they have to investigate if the premises had a licence to manufacture, or deal in, firecrackers.

Hours after the explosion, Nilimesh Roy Chowdhury, chairperson of the Kalyani Municipality and Trinamool Congress councillor of Kalyani’s ward number 11, had said that the site of the explosion was a godown for the storage and trade of firecrackers, and had a trading licence. 

However, Subrata Guha, Divisional Fire Officer at Nadia district, said the building did not have any licence from the fire department for storing or manufacturing firecrackers.

“Their entire operation was entirely illegal, and no valid licence was given to them by us. The cause of the explosion is not certain yet, but we did not see any electrical connection. So it is possible the raw materials caught fire from overheating,” he said.

Meanwhile, the local Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Ambika Roy said the police knew about illegal firecracker factories in the area but did not take action against them.

The explosion on Friday, which reduced the building to ashes and left dead bodies charred and scattered in the remains, is reminiscent of a series of similar explosions in illegal firecracker factories in the State in the last few years. In May 2023, 11 people had died in an explosion at an unlicensed firecracker unit in Purba Medinipur’s Egra subdivision. In the same year, seven people died in another such blast in the Duttapukur area of North 24 Parganas district.