Srinagar: As the fire broke out in the Kashmir’s most revered shrine, Khanqah-e-Moulla, the smoke alarms set in the building gave no signals as the equipments are lying defunct. 

Nafees Hamdani, one among the care takers of the shrine told ‘Kashmir Vision’ that at least 100 smoke alarms have been installed in the shrine but all of them are lying defunct.

“The smoke alarms set to get signals during the fire incidents were installed by the authorities at least 10 years ago,” he said, adding no one from the administration bothered to check their functioning since then thereby putting the shrine and its property at risk.

He said that it was one among the Khadim here who spotted the fire emanating from spire of the wooden shrine at around 01:00 am. “After hearing the cry of a Khadim, we all Khadims including the local residents rushed to the shrine to douse the fire,” Hamdani said.

He said that the generator to the pump shed installed in the premises of the shrine also didn’t work at that time due to the low petrol.

“The Pipe hose erected on the cemented tomb of the entry gate of shrine didn’t work as well. The pressure to the pipe hose was too low and couldn’t help in dousing the fire,” he said.

He said that keeping in view of the revered saint’s shrine, the authorities must have provided proper and adequate facility to control such incidents.

However, the facilities provided to the shrine are lying defunct. “The proper and adequate arrangements could have helped the Khadims and locals to douse the fire immediately,” he said. 

Hamdani urged the government to put better and effective mechanism in place so that such incidents could be controlled easily. 

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