Homes reduced to cinders, the residents of a colony in Anandapur spent a significant portion of Thursday sifting through the ruins for anything that endured the inferno that ravaged over 50 houses the night before.

They did not have much luck. A sickle here, a table fan there and a cooking pot nearby were some of the things that could be retrieved.

The melancholy that descended upon Matongini Colony in the Nonadanga area was deepened by concerns about documents lost in the fire.

In light of the contentious special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bengal, these documents provided a sense of assurance. In a moment, that assurance has morphed into fear.

“The voter cards, Aadhaar cards, and all other necessary documents were customarily stored in a trunk beneath a bed. However, in the past month, they have been transferred to a more accessible cupboard. Now, only the skeleton of the cupboard is left,” expressed Sandip Jana, a resident of the colony, located less than a five-minute drive from Calcutta International School on EM Bypass.

“The draft rolls have our names. But with all the confusion around SIR, no one can be sure,” said Jana, who paints houses for a living and lives with his elderly parents and sister.

Sandip Jana was not home when the fire broke out.

“When I returned, the flames were leaping from one home to another. Our house was burning. The deafening noise of cylinders exploding was scary. My family members had rushed out in time. The cops were not letting anybody in,” said Jana.

The blaze gutted more than 50 homes, mostly brick structures with tin or tile roofs. Every home had at least one cylinder, some more. Residents and police stated that the cylinder explosions helped the flames spread fast.

Suranjan Patra, in Class X of VIP Nagar High School, was staring blankly into the rubble that his home had turned to. Some pages of his mathematics book, lying in the black heap, were still legible.

Standing a stone’s throw away was Nitai Samanta, 58, a fishmonger. His daughter got married just over a month ago. She had come to his maternal home with her husband.

“The house was stacked with wedding gifts. Nothing survived,” said Samanta.

Neighbours Sukumar Halder and Bholanath Gharami stood next to each other, concern writ large on their faces.

“I could only retrieve this,” Halder said, bringing out a sickle from a jute bag.

The charred remains of a cupboard and fridge lay at his feet. “I am most worried about the documents that we lost. Aadhaar cards, voter cards, ration cards and birth certificates of my children, everything was reduced to ashes,” said Halder, a hawker in Kasba New Market.

Gharami, a mason, lived with his wife and two daughters, both security guards at a nearby private hospital.

One of them stitched blouses for some additional income. The machine was gutted along with the rest of the house.

“I feel devastated for her. She was getting a lot of orders and the house was full of blouses stitched by her. Now, nothing is left,” said Gharami.

The families who lost their homes have been shifted to a nearby community centre where they are being provided with food, said a police officer.

A forensic team visited the site on Thursday, collecting samples.

Local Trinamool sources said the colony was set up on government land. “The people have been living for over two decades,” said one of them.

Sushanta Ghosh, the local councillor (of Ward 108), said: “Fifty-three families have been displaced in the fire. Temporary homes will be rebuilt on the same site. Work will start in a day or two”.