Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Sunday said he spoke with Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta regarding the arrest of Uttarakhand native Keshav Negi in connection with the deadly fire at the Flourish Stay bed-and-breakfast facility in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar that claimed 21 lives earlier this week.
In a statement to reporters, Dhami said he sought a fair and impartial investigation. “Today I spoke with the chief minister of Delhi, Rekha Gupta, regarding the arrest of Keshav Negi of Uttarakhand in the Malviya Nagar fire incident in Delhi,” he said.
“Rekha Gupta has 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,” Dhami said.
He also spoke with Keshav 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.
The remarks came a day after Delhi Police arrested Keshav Negi, 65, a cook employed at the Hauz Rani-based B&B for over a year. A court remanded him to two days’ police custody on Saturday. Police said Negi told investigators he was preparing food in the ground-floor kitchen around 8.30am on Wednesday when he noticed a spark in a fryer that subsequently caught fire. However, Negi’s counsel told the Saket court the blaze was caused by an electrical short circuit elsewhere in the building, not in the kitchen as alleged by police.
Meanwhile, senior Congress leader and former Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat questioned the arrest and alleged that those actually responsible were being shielded. “The owner, management and others accountable for safety lapses should have been held responsible,” he said. “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 in a Facebook post, adding his stand was not based on Negi’s Uttarakhand origin.
Negi and Flourish Stay owner Lovkesh Bajaj have been booked under charges including culpable homicide not amounting to murder, negligent acts endangering human life, and mischief by fire at the Malviya Nagar police station.
