Guwahati, April 27: Assam lost a piece of history pertaining to its freedom movement when one of its nerve centres, Rasul Lodge, the house here at Danish Road where former President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed stayed for years, was gutted in a fire in the early hours today.

The over 50-year-old Italian-made scooter, Vespa 150, and a half-burnt file containing land papers were among the few household goods saved from the fire that broke out around 1.30am and damaged over 70 per cent of the heritage building. However, no one was injured.

The two-storey tin-roofed house made of Burmese teak, bricks and iron beams belonging to late Ikram Rasul, Ali Ahmed’s first cousin, is said to be Guwahati’s first double-storey building constructed in 1910.

“There were three to four Vespas in Guwahati then. Somehow it did not burn,” 22-year-old Evan Rasul, the great grand nephew of Ikram Rasul, told The Telegraph, pointing to the scooter (ASZ 3640) on the ground floor. Drops of water seeped from the wooden roof broken by fire-fighters to control the blaze.

“Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed stayed on the first floor when he became a minister and visited Guwahati from Shillong (Assam capital then),” said Ikram Rasul’s daughter Shameem Siraj Hazarika, 87, sitting in the building just on the other side of Danish Road. “This road was named after Danish Mohammad, elder brother of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed’s father, Col Zalnur Ali,” said Shameem’s daughter Shanin Yasmin Ahmed.

Raushana Ahmed Rasul, one of the descendants living in the house said, “It was around 1.30am when we woke up and saw fire raging in the huts behind our building. We called up the fire tenders but they reached about two hours late. Had the fire tenders reached on time, the heritage building could have been saved because the fire had not touched it then. By the time they reached, things were beyond control.”

Rasul’s property is on a 2.5-bigha plot, including the heritage building on three kotha of land. “We constructed the huts behind and rented them out as the plot became a dumping ground for those living in the nearby buildings,” said one of the descendants. There were around 50 huts.

Three of the eight siblings of Ikram Rasul are alive.

The family members said Ali Ahmed had first visited the house in 1930, soon after becoming a barrister from Cambridge, and started practice in Lahore. He tried for the principal’s job in a law college here but was not selected. He decided to stay back and joined politics in 1931. He became minister in the Gopinath Bordoloi (Assam’s first chief minister) cabinet and later served as a Union minister. He became the President in 1974.

The importance of the building was summed up by chief minister Tarun Gogoi, who visited the house around 12.40pm and spent about 30 minutes there.

“Like many senior Congress leaders, I used to visit this house even when I was an MP. The library in the house attracted many. Whatever is necessary will be done to restore its heritage,” he said.

Historian Dipankar Banerjee, in his book Heritage Guwahati, published in 2004, said, “The contract for construction of the house was given to Md Ida Khan. Iron beams and rods were ordered from Tata Iron and Steel Company in Bihar while machine-made Burmese teak flooring, windows and doors were brought in from Calcutta by steamer. In 1910, when the double-storied, eight-bedroom bungalow was complete, it obviously became the talk of the town.”