Owner does not have fire licence for any of his hotels
Times of India | 22 August 2026
Kolkata: The cop probe into the Shikha Inn fire that killed seven Bangladesh nationals along with two Indians on Wednesday has now found that the hotel owner Bireswar Mitra – a resident of Behala who is still absconding – has not arranged a fire licence for any of his hotel.
“While there is no fire licence for the second floor where the fire originated, we have not recovered any licence for the fourth floor of the same building, that too is owned by Mitra. We have detained the two leaseholders of the fourth floor – Umesh Singh and Jitendra Singh. They have not been able to show us any documents related to fire licences. We have informed the fire department and are awaiting a complaint from them,” said a cop.
Police said raids at Mitra’s second hotel – Hotel Jaapon – have not led to recovery of any fire licences. We did not find any fire licence at his Digha and Mandarmoni facilities as well. As far as raids outside Kolkata is concerned, we have written to the SP of East Midnapore,” said a cop.
So far six persons have been detained. “This includes workers and managers of other hotels owned by Mitra. We also want to know his whereabouts as we found that he spoke to one of his employees at 2 am. After that he switched off his mobile. His wife said that Mitra did not return home that night,” said a cop. Postmortem reports of the nine victims show that death was due to inhalation of poisonous gases. None of the victims appear to have been directly burned by the flames.