A fire broke out at a sweet shop at Queens Mansion, the magnificent Park Street landmark that houses popular commercial establishments and residential apartments.

The Gupta Brothers and Giggles stores were gutted.

Although no one was trapped or injured, pockets of the six-storey building got smoke-locked, necessitating evacuation on Friday afternoon.

Many inside the offices rushed out to the road, reviving the spectre of the Stephen Court fire 15 years ago. Forty-three people were charred to death in the summer of 2010 as a fire broke out in the adjoining building, Stephen Court.

Fire department officials said on Friday that six LPG cylinders were stocked in
the 750 square feet “Gupta Brothers, the Abaar Khabo Shoppe”, but prompt action prevented the cylinders from exploding.

Four fire tenders were pressed into action to douse the fire.

Mohammad Shabir, who runs a small shop on Park Street, said the sweet shop is on the ground floor. At the mezzanine level, right above it, is the Giggles gift shop. “Both floors were destroyed,” Shabir said.

The fire brigade said “partially gutted”.

The owner of Barkat Ali and Bros, a once sought-after destination for custom-fitted suits, Nadeem Ali Akhtar, told The Telegraph that he heard screams and then spotted a lot of smoke. “I could not see the fire, but there was a lot of smoke. I heard screams and realised there was a fire,” he said.

The fire was reported around 12.40pm. By then, black fumes had started billowing out of the shop and filling the pavement along Park Street, opposite The Park Hotel.

“We all saw thick smoke coming out of the building. Someone alerted the fire brigade. There was instant panic. People were scared that there would be blasts,” said a passerby.

An employee of Axis Bank’s Park Street branch, next to the sweet shop that caught fire, opened the shutter of the branch to let out the smoke that had entered.

CESC officials went to the spot and disconnected the power supply in the area till the fire was extinguished.

The ground floor of the six-storey building has only commercial establishments. The upper floors have residential units.

The heritage building, over 100 years old, is owned by the LIC.

Divisional fire officer Pulak Sharma said that two floors were smoke-locked by the time the firefighting team arrived.

“There were six LPG cylinders in the kitchen, and there was every possibility of an explosion. But our men worked fast and removed the cylinders from the kitchen, eliminating the chances of an explosion,” said Sharma.

Fire-preparedness in the building was rudimentary, the firemen alleged.

“We could not locate any source of water near the shop from where we could replenish the fire tenders. We had to replenish them from Stephen Court and the building opposite Queens Mansion,” said a senior fire department official.

A resident who lives in Queens Mansion said a few fire extinguishers were installed a few years ago but they have disappeared.

Officers of Shakespeare Sarani police station and the disaster management group also rushed to the spot. “Fortunately, no one was injured or trapped. A major mishap was averted,” an officer said.

Vineet Gupta, owner of the Gupta Brothers store, said the shop had sprinklers and fire alarms. “However, the fire spread so rapidly that nothing could contain it.”

He said two staff members were working inside. They came out immediately when an air-conditioner on the ground floor outlet caught fire. “Luckily, no one was injured,” he said.

In the KMC’s Graded list of heritage buildings, Queens Mansion is a grade-I structure.

Shorn of some of its old sheen, it is still beautiful. “Queens Mansion has a British Colonial architecture with an urban mansion typology that had emerged when it was built in the early 1920s,” said conservation architect Anjan Mitra, who repaired and restored Queens Mansion last year.

Tennis player Leander Paes’s mother and footballer Jamshid Nassiri are some of the famous residents of the building.