Rekha Chemical factory owners, son arrested after inferno

Kamala Sajjanraj

Sajjanraj

Police on Wednesday arrested the owners of Rekha Chemical Corporation and Rekha Chemicals Industries, a day after the companies’ warehouse was destroyed in a fire accident in Hosaguddadahalli near Bapujinagar.

Besides Sajjanraj, 66, the owner of Rekha Chemical Industries, and his wife Kamala Sajjanraj, 60, the owner of Rekha Chemical Corporation, police also arrested their son Anil Kumar, 30, who was managing the business at the gutted warehouse. Police say the family did not have the permission to operate the warehouse in a residential area.

DCP (West) Sanjeev M Patil said the owners had acquired the licence to run both the companies in Bommasandra, South Bengaluru. Since they had problems with storing the chemicals, they took the warehouse without the necessary permission. They purchased two pieces of land — 60x110 feet in 1992 and 30x108 ft in 1998 — in the name of Kamala Sajjanraj. They did not take permission for the warehouse from BBMP, the fire department and the pollution control board, and operated it illegally, Patil said.

Sajjanraj established Rekha Chemicals in 1978 and bought chemicals from Mumbai, Kochi and Chennai and sent them to the farm industries as thinner chemicals (a chemical used mainly while painting buildings).

The company was supposed to send eight barrels each containing 85 kilograms of Isopropyl alcohol to Crescent Chemical Industries in Lingarajapuram on Tuesday. As per Sajjanraj’s instructions, his employee Biju Singh transferred the chemical from a barrel to another. Since the barrel was exposed to sunlight, the chemical surface contacting with another created static charges and produced sparks. The barrel caught fire and Singh was injured. All 320 barrels with 64,000 litres of chemicals went up in flames.