MUMBAI: A fire broke out early on Sunday and raged on for nearly 10 hours in ED’s zone-1 office in a privately owned building in south Mumbai’s Ballard Estate, sparking fears that investigation records of some high-profile cases, including those involving fugitive businessmen Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi as well as politicians Chhagan Bhujbal and Anil Deshmukh, may have been lost.
There was no clarity on whether ongoing investigations would be hit, but sources indicated a severe impact on office infrastructure, including computers and documentation. They said an assessment of the extent of the damage is underway. While both physical and digital records of investigations were stored at the office, the sources said since most of the documents were digitised, the agency may be able to recover them.
ED has submitted in court the original investigation records of cases in which chargesheets have been filed, keeping the copies with itself. The questioning of scheduled witnesses summoned by ED for statements at the office will be affected following the fire.
ED has offices on the fourth floor as well as on a portion of the first floor of the heritage building, Kaiser-I-Hind, which has more than four floors. The fire was confined to the fourth floor office, which housed the agency’s additional director’s office and investigation units. Both floors were shut owing to the late hours.
According to the fire brigade, the fire broke out around 2.30am in the building. Only canteen staff and security personnel were present in the building at that time. No one sustained any injury. The fire brigade said the blaze was confined to the probe agency’s wooden furniture and other office infrastructure. It said furniture placed in the common passage and the balcony impeded firefighting operations.
The blaze was initially declared as level-1 (minor), which was scaled up to level-3 (major) around 4.20am as fire brigade personnel could not locate its source. “We could not enter the premises due to heavy smoke and heat. Besides, the building only has a single staircase as it is old. A large number of papers/documents, besides wooden furniture, fuelled the fire. The attic did not have much ventilation,” said an official. The fire was finally doused by noon.
ED’s zone-2 office used to operate out of the building’s ground floor, but it moved out to Ceejay House in Worli. The probe agency’s zone-1 office has been using this ground floor as an extended office. The Custodian of Enemy Property for India occupies half of the first floor, while private establishments operate on the second and third floors.
Senior fire brigade officials, including chief fire officer Ravindra Ambulgekar, supervised the firefighting operations. BMC additional commissioner Amit Saini also visited the site and supervised operations.
