Two managers of the Anandapur warehouse of momo chain Wow Momo, where a fire killed at least three employees on Monday morning, were arrested on Friday morning.

Warehouse manager Manoranjan Shit and deputy manager Raja Chakraborty have been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder and violations of fire-safety standards.

Their lawyer told a Baruipur court, which sent them to five days’ police custody, that the fire had begun in an adjacent warehouse but the public prosecutor argued that this remained to be established.

The other warehouse that burnt down that day belonged to a decorator agency. The death toll is yet to be ascertained. The police have recovered 25 body parts and received 27 missing-person complaints.

On Friday, the police sent 21 body samples to a forensic laboratory for DNA matching.

Gangadhar Das, proprietor of the decorator agency, was arrested on Tuesday evening on similar charges. He is said to be the owner of both the warehouses, one of which Wow Momo had rented.

So far, three Wow Momo employees have been confirmed dead. Sources said the company warehouse had 33 employees.

A source in Wow Momo said the two managers supervised all operations at the warehouse, “from preparing duty rosters and receiving and storing goods to dispatching orders”.

Manoranjan has been with the company for around 10 years, and Raja for three years or so, sources said.

At the Baruipur court, Wow Momo submitted sheaves of documents that included photographs and reports of past fire-safety drills at the warehouse in Nazirabad, Anandapur.

“Our men lost their lives because of a fire that started in an adjoining warehouse; and now our staff are getting arrested,” the two managers’ lawyer said.

He said “not even a matchstick” had been lit in the Wow Momo warehouse.

The public prosecutor said the cause of the fire and where it started would be known once the forensic findings became available.

Two of the Wow Momo employees who died in the blaze -- Pankaj Halder and Basudeb Halder -- had certificates of participation in past fire drills, police sources said. The third was a contractual security guard, Rabish Hazda.

The company has offered their next of kin ₹10 lakh as a lump sum apart from a “lifetime salary” every month, and promised to pay for their children’s education.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced an ex gratia of ₹2 lakh for the dead and ₹50,000 for the injured. He described the deaths as “very tragic and saddening”.

Bengal governor C.V. Ananda Bose visited the fire site on Friday and said “unauthorised constructions flourish” because “those in positions of influence become parasites of lawbreakers”.

“To prevent the next Nazirabad, we must move beyond the familiar cycle of outrage and mourning followed by silence,” he said.

“What often follows tragedies is excessive initial enthusiasm that gradually fades once public memory dims. This cannot continue.”

He added: “There is absolutely no excuse for wilful violation of the law. Human life cannot be weighed against convenience, corruption, or expediency.”

Reacting to the governor’s comments, state fire minister Sujit Bose said the fire was an “unfortunate incident, but businessmen also have a lot of responsibilities”.

“The government is doing whatever it has to,” he said.