The devastating fire at Kolkata's AMRI Hospital on Friday that has already claimed 89 lives is another brazen example of criminal negligence by hospital authorities.
There is little doubt that Calcutta high court's recent decision to release R S Agarwal, on of the directors of AMRI hospital, on bail would further magnify the extreme puzzlement of the victims, and ordinary people, over the horrendous fire that killed 90 patients in December last, writes Dr Kunal Saha.
Two management staff of the AMRI Hospital where 90 persons, mostly patients, choked to death from a fire in the basement on December nine, were arrested on Monday.
The wreaths were placed on a makeshift memorial, a tribute by local people who assisted fire-fighters in rescue operations at the annexe of the AMRI Hospital at Dhakuria whose interiors were still emanating smoke and the smell of burnt flesh.
Emami's soaring fortunes have been dragged down to earth by the blaze that torched its AMRI Hospital, killing 93 people. With seven directors -- six of them family members -- in jail or absconding, can the Emami Group survive the rocky road ahead?
The fire, suspected to have originated in the electrical department in the basement of the AMRI hospital, swiftly spread to the first and second floors, trapping patients, with the fire brigade called in at 4:00 am, the sources said.
A massive fire that tore through a budget hotel in the congested Mechuapatti area of Burrabazar in central Kolkata on Tuesday night claimed at least 14 lives and left 13 injured, triggering a political blame game and calls for accountability.
Two young men jostle in a rickshaw as it clatters along a narrow, bustling lane of North Kolkata, each with a leg dangling over the side of the vehicle, a bulging sack of cosmetics nestled between them. The protagonists here are the founders of Emami - Radhe Shyam Agarwal and Radhe Shyam Goenka - childhood friends who gave up cushy corporate jobs to build a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company. From a 200-square-foot rented space on Muktaram Babu Street in North Kolkata, brand Emami stepped into the competitive world of FMCG 50 years back, armed with just three products: Vanishing cream, talcum powder, and cold cream.
Next year Medica and Manipal will merge, making the amalgamated entity the largest corporate hospital chain in the country, overtaking Apollo Hospitals Enterprises.
While Emami is still struggling to push growth, given weak rural demand, the sale of the group's stake in AMRI Hospitals should ease investor concerns about stake pledges by promoters. It has also carried a series of stake acquisitions which should enable the expansion of its brand portfolio. The Q2 results are likely to see flat volumes and low revenue growth alongside some gross margin expansion.
The stock of consumer goods major Emami has corrected nearly 3.5 per cent since its 52-week high of Rs 546.25. On August 29, the stock closed at Rs 521.90 on the BSE. After underperforming the Nifty FMCG index for a long time, the stock is now doing a catch up and surged over 13 per cent in the past one month.
Odisha is facing a morgue crunch as a large number of unclaimed dead bodies from Balasore's triple train accident, have piled up at its mortuaries.
A year after the devastating fire at AMRI Hospital in Kolkata, another inferno is just waiting to erupt anytime in another hospital or nursing home in the state, warns Dr Kunal Saha
The blaze was suspected to have been triggered by an electric short circuit in the dialysis ward which spread to the ICU.
Railway officials also indicated that possible 'sabotage' and tampering with the electronic interlocking system, which detects the presence of trains, led to the Friday accident.
Chaos broke out on the premises of the AMRI Hospital where a fire broke out on Friday morning with families of patients vandalising the reception counter aggrieved that no list of the dead and injured was provided.
Both the doctors -- Mani Chhetri and Pranab Dasgupta -- who were earlier questioned by police, were arrested from their residences in Kolkata on Friday morning, Joint Commissioner of Police Damayanti Sen said.
With the arrest of two senior officials of the AMRI Hospital on Tuesday in connection with the devastating fire at its Dhakuria facility on Friday last, the number of arrests rose to nine.
Alarmed by the devastating fire at the AMRI Hospital in neighbouring Kolkata, which claimed 93 lives, the Assam government has decided to conduct a fresh fire-safety audit in all hospitals, educational institutions, hotels and residential apartment buildings across the state.
Marwari community has chosen to portray Mamata Banerjee's patent bias against it after the AMRI Hospital fire as unfair persecution.
It is this increasing vulnerability of senior corporate executives towards litigations that has set the ball rolling for directors and officers' liability cover for insurance companies.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced in the assembly on Thursday that retired judge Tapan Mukherjee will be conducting an inquiry into the fire incident
Two senior officials of AMRI Hospital were arrested on Tuesday in connection with Friday's fire in the facility that left 93 people dead. S Upadhay, senior vice-president and the hospital safety committee chairman and Sanjiv Pal, administrative officer, were arrested today, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Damayanti Sen said. The two officials would be produced before a city court later in the day, he said.
While the debacle in AMRI Hospital is the latest in Bengal healthcare, frequent episodes of medical fiascos have continued unabated, points out Dr Kunal Saha
Businessmen are favourite punching bags of the powers that be whenever public opinion needs to be controlled.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday called for taking steps to prevent recurrence of devastating fire like that claimed 93 lives in the private AMRI Hospital which was engulfed in flames on December 9.
Six persons, including industrialist S K Todi of the AMRI group, were arrested and the licence of the hospital where 84 persons suffocated to death after a fire on Friday, was cancelled.
The fire, suspected to have originated in the electrical department in the basement of the AMRI hospital, swiftly spread to the first and second floors, trapping patients, with the fire brigade called in at 4:00 am, the sources said.
The Calcutta high court on Thursday granted bail to a director of the AMRI Hospital, where over 90 people had been killed in December last year, after a fire broke out in its basement. A division bench comprising Justices Asim Kumar Roy and Ashim Kumar Ray granted bail to AMRI Director S K Todi, who has been in custody since December 9.
Directors of AMRI Hospital Manish Goenka and Ravi Todi were on Monday granted bail by the Calcutta high court in connection with the December 9 hospital fire that killed 90 people, mostly patients. Goenka and Todi, who were in custody for 116 days, were granted bail by a division bench comprising justices Ashim Kumar Roy and Asim Kumar Ray.
A city court on Tuesday extended the police remand of six arrested directors of AMRI hospital, where 93 persons choked to death in a devastating fire, by three days on a plea by the Kolkata Police.
Chief Judicial Magistrate of the Alipur court, S M Shahnawaz remanded R S Goenka, S K Todi, Prashant Goenka, Manish Goenka, Ravi Todi and Dayanand Agarwal in police custody till December 20.
When 24-year-old Remya called her home here from AMRI Hospital in Kolkata in the wee hours on Friday, her mother did not think that she was hearing from her daughter for the last time.
Civic authorities have sealed two blocks of the fire-ravaged private AMRI Hospital in Kolkata even as authorities handed over majority of the bodies of the 90 people killed to their relatives.
Communist Party of India-Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu was admitted on Sunday to a Kolkata hospital after he fell unconscious at his residence this morning, doctors treating him said.
The condition of Communist Party of India - Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu, 96, turned extremely critical on Saturday evening after he suffered multi-organ failure, a medical bulletin said.Dr Ajit Kumar Maity, Basu's personal physician and a member of the medical board at the hospital, said, "All five vital organs -- heart, lungs, kidney, brain and liver -- are not functioning properly."
The condition of Communist Party of India-Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu turned extremely critical on Saturday with all his vital organs affected and there was 'little hope of any good result.'
The former West Bengal chief minister was admitted to Salt Lake's AMRI Hospital on New Year's Day with pneumonia and was shifted to the intensive care unit five days later as he developed sepsis.
Communist Party of India-Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu on Thursday's night underwent a two-hour haemodialysis after further deterioration in his cardiac and renal functions and his condition was unstable and very critical, his personal physician A K Maity said.
The condition of veteran Communist Party of India - Marxist leader Jyoti Basu on Wednesday showed slight improvement but he continued to remain critical. "Basu's blood pressure and pulse are stable at the moment and he has mild fever," said AMRI Hospital Superintendent Dr Debashis Sharma.Basu continues to be on partial ventilation and is being administered blood pressure stabilising drugs ionotrops, he said, adding that his sensorium has shown little improvement.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances