Canning Street: Bagree Market was built in 1940 with just three floors. The upper floors of the now six-storey building were built nearly five decades later.
Sugan Chand Bagree had built the ground, first and second floors. Over the years, the reins of the market passed from one Bagree to another.
The market at present has three directors, two of whom are locked in an ownership battle with the third, traders said.
"Some court-appointed valuers visited the market on Friday to assess the property after a dispute within the Bagree family over their shares in the company running the market," a trader said.
The market initially had around 400 shops but the count multiplied over the years, he said. Current estimates range from 1,200 to nearly 2,500.
"When I first came here in 1973, there were three floors on the northern side and five floors on the southern side facing Canning Street. Three floors one the southern side and one floor on the northern side were added in 1987," said Mohammad Qasim, a trader in costume jewellery.
Asutosh Singh, the president of Bagree Market Central Kolkata Traders' Welfare Association, said there were 957 rooms and 600 tenants in the market at present.
"There are some traders who have more than one room. That is why the number of rooms is more than the number of tenants," said Singh, who took charge only a day before the fire.
The traders' welfare association was formed only last year as the shopowners felt the need for proper management. Singh was elected the president and Qasim the vice-president of the association on Saturday.
Many of the shopowners allegedly do not have trade licences and are likely to have bought the space from the original owners. In many cases, a single shop has been split into two or more.
One trader said each of the shopowners paid Rs 40 per sq ft for installing fire-safety gadgets but alleged that the devices were not maintained properly. The fire-safety devices at Bagree Market allegedly did not work after the fire broke out.
Radha Bagree, Varun Bagree and Mohanlal Bagree are the current directors of the market, traders said. "Radha appointed Varun as director and both of them are locked in a battle with Mohanlal over ownership," said a trader, who didn't want to be named.
Metro called on mobile phone numbers provided by the traders as belonging to Radha and Varun Bagree, directors of Bagree Estates Private Limited, the company that runs Bagree Market, but there was no response.
Neither of the two was available at their Ballygunge home when Metro went there on Monday afternoon. The company's office in Lyons Range, too, was locked.
An employee of a stockbroking company in the same building said Radha hadn't come to office during the past week but Varun did on Friday. "There was no one today. There is another gentleman named Krishna Kumar Kothari alias Kalu Kothari, who has been appointed the CEO of the company. He too didn't come," said the man.
A cloud of uncertainty hangs over whether the building can be opened for business again. Engineers of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation said they would visit the building to check its structurally stability only after the forensic tests are over. "We cannot go inside till forensic experts are done with their work. Only when we get an official order, can we visit and examine the structural stability of the building," a civic engineer said.
A civil engineer said there was always a risk of the steel reinforcements inside the concrete expanding in the heat. "The brick walls may not be affected but the steel reinforcements inside the columns and beams may expand because of heat," said the engineer, who works for a private company.
