Kin of Bangla fire victims eye return to city, fret over safe stay options
Times of India | 26 August 2026
Kolkata: Back home with relatives in coffins, Bangladeshi families are grappling with the loss a week after a fire ripped through Shikha Inn at Free School Street, leaving nine people dead. The bereaved families are now contemplating returning to the city on a hunt for the victims’ belongings, which remain “untraceable”. However, they are fretting over “secured accommodations” as several hotels and guest houses in New Market and Mukundapur areas have already been slapped with closure notices due to lack of fire-safety measures.
Talking to TOI on the phone on Tuesday, most of the victims’ family members mourned that they had spoken to the victims for the last time before the fire killed them in the wee hours of last Wednesday. Relatives of Babu Ahmed, a cosmetics trader from Savar, who was among the fire victims, are slated to visit Kolkata two weeks later, for the treatment of the victim’s brother-in-law Hazi Habibur Rahaman, a blood cancer patient. While staying in the city, they will launch a search for his belongings as Babu had bought cosmetic products worth around Rs 3 lakh from New Market area for his business.
“Only his body was handed over to us. We did not get his belongings back. Along with the goods that he had bought for his shop, his two cell phones are also missing. On our Kolkata visit on Sept 8, we will seek police help to retrieve those missing articles,” said Anishul Habib, a kin of Ahmed. “We have to depend on Kolkata for our treatment. But we are worried over where to stay. For Rahaman’s treatment, we will be required to stay in the city for a few days,” he added.
The relatives of the deceased are monitoring the crackdown on the hotels and guest houses where they normally stay. Md Animul Haque, nephew of victim S M Alimuzzaman, a shrimp farm businessman in Satkhira, stated: “His family members are yet to come to terms with the loss. As his belongings have not reached us, we will visit Kolkata soon in search of them. But the hotels in our known places are under scanner, so we don’t know where else to find safe accommodations.”
Friends and relatives of Debasish Dutta, a journalist of a Bangladeshi daily, who died in the fire along with three family members, including his three-year-old son, are seeking the help of the administration to retrieve their luggage and other belongings as they had gone shopping at New Market a day before the tragedy. “There might be something that Dutta had got for his daughter who was with her grandparents in Kushtia then. As Dutta was the sole breadwinner of his family, the school where the girl studies has decided to sponsor her entire school education,” said Touhidi Hasan, a family friend of the victim.