Lit cigarettes thrown on nylon fishing net led to Vishakhapatnam fire: Police

Vishakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) [India], November 25 : The Vishakhapatnam police said on Saturday that the massive fire, which gutted around 40 boats at the Visakhapatnam fishing harbour last week, was caused by lit cigarettes thrown on the nylon fishing net of an adjoining boat by two miscreants.
Vishakhapatnam City Commissioner of Police (CP) Ravi Shankar said that the case has been solved and two accused have been held.
"We have been able to solve the case of the fire accident that took place at Vishakhapatnam Fishing Harbour. There are primarily two accused who have been arrested. One is Vasupally Nani and the other guy is his own uncle Satyam," the CP said while talking to reporters on Saturday.
Narrating the incident, the CP said, "Both of them have been drinking since morning on that particular day. They were at Boat Number 885, where they fried fish and had a lot of liquor. They also smoked and the burning cigarette was thrown by them on the fishing net of the adjoining boat. Since it was a nylon net, very combustible, it caught fire."
"The fire from there caught on to the diesel fuel tank as well as the cylinders there and then it spread to the adjoining boats. In the meantime these two accused they escaped from the scene, went home in their motorcycles and again came back to the scene," Ravi Shankar added.
The police said that the accused could be traced by analysing technical evidence.
"We have been able to fix these two guys to the crime scene and to the crime by the help of technical evidence like tower dump analysis, call data analysis as well as the CCTV footages," he said.
Almost 30 suspects were interrogated by the police before they narrowed down to the two accused, the CP said.
"Nearly 30 suspects were brought to the police station. In the last two days, sustained interrogation was carried out by DCP (Deputy Commissioner of Police) Anant Reddy as well as Assistant Commissioner of Police Moses Paul, who is the investigating officer," he said.
On the damages caused by the incident, the CP said, "30 boats got completely gutted. They were all mechanised boats. Another 18 were partially burnt."
Speaking about giving importance to fire prevention measures, he said, "We have to take fire prevention measures as a priority so that such incidents do not happen in future."
"We also need to educate the fishermen community here and see to it that in the boat designs some fire safety measures are installed. There are almost 1000 plus litres of diesel in every boat, along with the cooking gas cylinders. We also want to install foam fire tenders and some sensors for early detection," he added.
On enhancing security for the fishing boats, the CP said, "We also want the fishemen community to have guards for at least 2-3 boats. We will also take the Vishakhapatnam Port Trust Chairman into confidence and mobilise funds."