Mystery shrouds over Medak DRDA office fire

Hundreds of documents and furniture were destroyed in the fire that engulfed the office in the wee hours

Medak: The District Rural Development Agency (DRDA)-IKP office located on the first floor of Medak MRO office caught fire in the wee hours of Wednesday, destroying several documents and furniture.

Though officials believe the cause of the fire was due to short circuit in one of the plug points, several questions remained unanswered as to why too many documents were piled-up in that office.

Documents which caught fire included voter lists, booklets for election officers, applications of farmers for availing loans and other subsidies, in addition to land documents.

The incident happened at around 6 am and was brought to the notice of IKP-DRDA officials by local journalists in Medak town who were taking a morning-walk in that area where Information and Public Relations office is also located.

At around 7 am, fire fighters reached the spot. Fire station is located just a stone’s throw away from the MRO office.

By the time fire was brought under control, furniture, several bundles of documents, a television set used by IKP department and other items were burnt to ashes. Several bundles of documents and booklets were burnt partially and were removed from the two rooms which caught fire on the top floor by workers in DRDA-IKP and MRO office even as the fire fighters were trying to contain the smoke in the rooms even at 11 am.

According to Swathi, neighbourhood centre activist in IKP, huge bundles of booklets and documents were stacked near the wall. As the plug point in one corner of the room could not be accessed due to the stacked bundles, one of the tube lights used to be turned on all the time.

She said it could be the cause of fire. She added that documents from MRO office were also stored in the rooms which caught fire. “We have been telling them to remove the bundles for a long time as they made the room congested. But it wasn’t done,” she said.

When The Hans India spoke to RDO Nagesh who was taking stock of the situation on the spot, he said most of the documents which were already computerised were stored in the rooms on the top floor, so there was nothing to worry about important documents.

He said most of the bundles were election booklets, lists and stuff like that. “These were the documents which were supposed to be disposed off anyways. We just used those rooms as a storing area before disposing them off,” he said.