Gas plot to kill tenants

Pinaki Das / TNN / Feb 8, 2008, 02:38 IST

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A property developer looking to get a plot vacated adopted a rather extreme technique to get his tenant to leave - he pumped cooking gas into the tenant's room.

HOWRAH: A property developer looking to get a plot vacated adopted a rather extreme technique to get his tenant to leave — he allegedly pumped cooking gas into the tenant's room through Wednesday night. In the wee hours of Thursday, the room burst into flames, killing the tenant's wife and leaving him and his 12-year-old daughter battling for life at a Howrah hospital.
Kashinath Jaiswal, the developer, was arrested on the basis of an FIR lodged by the tenant's son.A local tea stall owner who helped Jaiswal in the crime was also arrested.
Jaiswal owns 11 cottahs (more than half a bigha) of land on 276, G T Road in Shibpur, Howrah. The prime plot has 12 single-room tenements along its periphery with a courtyard at the centre. The tile-roofed rooms are occupied by tenants, some of whom have been living there for the past 40-45 years.
It transpires that Jaiswal, who lives in a flat next door, was trying to get the plot vacated. While some of the tenants agreed to leave, others like Bahadur Shaw, the man whose room was gassed, refused to budge. Shaw's extended family occupied three rooms in the corner of the courtyard; his was the cornermost room where he lived with his wife Kewla and daughter Deepika, while the adjacent tenements were occupied by his brothers.

Wednesday being Bengal bandh, Shaw — a confectionery supplier — prepared for a busy Thursday. Before turning in that night, he piled up his baked goods near the entrance, planning to make an early start. But around 3.30 am on Thursday, people in the neighbourhood woke up to Shaw's screams. They rushed out to find him in the courtyard, his body engulfed in flames. "I rubbed my eyes and tried my best to snuff out the flames. Then I looked inside the room, and saw Shaw's wife and daughter lying charred on the bed," said neighbour Javed Ali.
While Kewla was dead, Deepika is barely alive. A search led cops to a two-feet wide drain between the plot in contention and the adjacent one where Jaiswal lived — the drain passed right behind Shaw's room, which had an opening for waste water to pass into the drain. The cops found an LPG cylinder in the drain with its hose sticking into Shaw's room through the small opening. The cylinder was empty.

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