Jayalalithaa at an iftaar in Chennai. (PTI file picture)

Alathur (TN), Nov. 4: A blast ripped through a pharmaceutical factory here last night, about 7 km from a farmhouse that has been a second home to Jayalalithaa, killing two employees and injuring four.

Residents of Sirudhavur ? the village where the chief minister’s farmhouse is located ? claimed she was there and would have been startled by the 9 pm blast that was heard as far as Mamallapuram, 18 km away. But officials in Chennai refused to confirm this.

The blast at the Orchid Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals plant didn’t emit any poisonous gases, company spokesman A. Sarvesan claimed even though smoke billowed from the factory this morning and a pungent smell hung in the air.

Jayalalithaa and her confidante Sasikala have in recent months been shuttling between the chief minister’s official Poes Garden residence in Chennai and the sprawling, high-security village farmhouse. Jayalalithaa, sources said, attributes her party’s recent bypoll wins to the “good Vaastu” of the farmhouse, where she had then just begun staying.

A top official from the chief minister’s office visited the factory this evening to see for himself if everything was under control.

Hundreds of people from villages 5-10 km away ? stunned by the loud bang and worried by the tall flames ? thronged Alathur village, 46 km from Chennai, this morning to “see what had happened”. Some said friends and relatives from the port town of Mamallapuram, who had heard the explosion, had called them to ask if they were safe.

“It was ten times the sound of thunder,” said Senthil, a young villager. “Our first thought had been that something must have happened at the Kalpakkam nuclear power plant (which is 35 km from the village).”

The blast and the fire could easily have triggered a disaster, for the Orchid unit is located on the Alathur industrial estate that houses some 55 pharmaceutical factories. Villagers complained this was the third blast in the past two years on the estate ? developed by the Tamil Nadu Small Industries Corporation (Sidco) ? but nothing had been done to protect them.

“With so many factories using hazardous chemicals, we don’t even have a fire station in this village despite repeated requests,” Senthil said. “The nearest fire station is at Chengalpattu, 35 km away.”

Villagers said that usually 14 men worked night shifts at the plant though four had taken last night off. “We fear many more (than the official figure of four) have been injured in the explosion,” said Kumaran. The earlier two blasts and fires hadn’t killed anybody.

Sarvesan, the spokesman for the company, which manufactures antibiotics mostly for export, said two junior executives, Isaikki Muthu and Senthil Kumar, had died and four workers had been injured.

The plant was purifying a solvent, dimethyl formamide, when the explosion happened. The solvent ? needed to make the antibiotoc cephalexin ? is a “docile chemical” and therefore the blast didn’t emit any dangerous gases, Sarvesan claimed. There were no reports of illnesses or gas poisoning from the village.

Sarvesan shortlisted four possible causes for the “sudden blast”: overheating, chemical degradation, equipment failure and human error.