The market on fire on Sunday. (Anirban Choudhury)

Jaigaon (Alipurduar) May 2: Six fire engines fought for five hours early this morning to bring a market blaze under control, but not before 22 shops had been razed to the ground. Till noon, smoke was emanating from the burnt shops whose owners pegged the loss at Rs 10 core.

A team from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Calcutta is coming to investigate the cause of the fire that started half an hour after midnight, a police officer in Jaigaon said.

The people of Jaigaon have demanded a fire station in the area where the population is nearly 2 lakh.

Md Taher, a worker at a construction site adjacent to the Jaigaon Super Market near the Bhutan border, had first spotted smoke coming out from a shop that sold bags.

He alerted those who were sleeping in their shops. A fire engine from Phuentsholling in Bhutan — 500 metres from the market — was the first to arrive in 15 minutes followed by fire tenders from Hasimara and Alipurduar, 57km away.

Bhutan allowed all the fire engines to fill up from its reservoirs in Phuentsholling. Otherwise, the market would have been burnt completely as there are no waterbodies within 20km. The blaze was under control by 5.30am. One fire engine arrived at noon to spray water on the ashes giving out smoke.

Ramprit Sha, who was sleeping inside a garment shop adjacent to the bag shop, said Taher’s shouts had woken him up. “A few minutes after I came out of my shop, the roof of the bag shop blew off and then the fire spread very fast.”

Jhantu Jaiswal, the president of the Jaigaon Merchants’ Association, said as soon as news of the fire reached him, he had contacted the electricity office asking them to cut off the power supply to the market that had more than 500 shops. “But nobody arrived. We had no option but to do it ourselves. Had the wind fanning the flames not stopped and the two pucca buildings not been there, the flames would have reduced the market to ashes. As it now stands, the loss is not less than Rs 10 crore as the shops belonged to wholesalers. None of the shops had any fire insurance. Jaigaon has a population of nearly 2 lakh but there are no fire stations. We told Debasish Sen, the principal secretary in the municipal affairs department during his recent visit to Jaigaon, to set up a fire station here because the nearest one (in Hasimara) is 24km away.”

Jaiswal recollected the fire in 1987 when all 522 shops in the market were gutted. “Foam had been sprayed from the helicopter but all the shops were burnt.”

Pradeep Sarkar, the officer in charge of Alipurduar fire station, said had Bhutan not provided with a continuous supply of water, there would have been more problems. “Preliminary investigation reveals that negligence was the cause of the fire,” said Sarkar hinting at faulty electricity lines and appliances.

Litan Ghosh, the owner of six shops — all of them were burnt — said his six-member family depended on the shops and he had no other sources of income.