A 59-year-old bank official and his 92-year-old father died in their sleep in separate rooms on the first floor of their house in Birati on the northeastern fringes of Kolkata, possibly after inhaling fumes from a fire caused by a short-circuit in the computer downstairs, police said.
The smoke was trapped in the two-storey house with all its windows closed on a winter morning. The trapped smoke is suspected to have led to the two deaths, an officer of Bidhannagar police said.
Bidyut Banerjee, 59, who worked in a managerial post in a bank, and his 92-year-old father Bijay Kumar Banerjee, a retired railway official, were declared dead in hospital. Bidyut’s mother Shefali, 87, has been hospitalised.
A neighbour smelt something burning close to 4am on Tuesday. Following an alert, a night patrol vehicle swung into action and alerted the fire department.
“There were no external injury marks on their bodies. Prima facie it appears the fire that broke out on the ground floor caused fumes that entered the rooms of the son and the parents. Most of the smoke had entered Bidyut Banerjee’s room. His parents’ room was getting filled with smoke when a neighbour spotted the fire and raised an alarm,” said deputy commissioner of police (airport zone) J. Mercy.
The house in Birati
The elderly man, who had a heart ailment, could not survive. His wife recovered in the hospital and was in a “stable” condition on Tuesday evening, police said.
The bodies will be sent for post-mortem.
The police said a neighbour was the first to spot fumes coming out of the building and smell the stench of burning paper.
“A forensic team will visit the house on Wednesday. There were a lot of books around the computer which caught fire. The books burned very slowly without causing big flames. Had there been flames or thicker fumes, neighbours would have been alerted earlier and the tragedy would have been averted,” said a senior officer of the airport police station.
By the time the fumes were spotted and neighbours barged into the house, a lot of smoke had accumulated inside.
The house is located in a congested residential area at Mahajati Nagar in Birati, on the northern fringes of the city.
Most people sleep with their windows closed during winter.
“Sleeping with an electronic gadget plugged into the power source is also common. That must be avoided. In this case, it appears that both mistakes — keeping the computer cable plugged into the switch board and keeping the windows closed — led to the tragedy,” said a senior officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate.
In 2011, a 34-year-old executive died in a similar way after he went to sleep with his laptop plugged into the switch board with earplugs on.
A forensic expert said carbon monoxide-rich fumes are difficult to detect as they are “odourless”.
“Fumes from incompletecombustion in a limited supply of oxygen led to the production of carbon monoxide which, is odourless and cannot be detected. These fumes are silent killers,” said a forensic expert.
