Dhaka, Aug 20 — India's High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Dinesh Trivedi, on Thursday assured that New Delhi would take all necessary steps following the deaths of Bangladeshi nationals in a hotel fire in Kolkata, local media reported.
“It's very sad. We will certainly do whatever needs to be done,” he said while addressing reporters following a meeting with Bangladesh's Health and Family Welfare Minister Sakhawat Hossain at the Secretariat in Dhaka.
Hossain described the meeting as a courtesy call and said the issue of Bangladeshi nationals' deaths in India was not discussed, Bangladeshi media outlet UNB reported.
Reports suggest that at least nine persons, including a child and a woman, were killed as a major fire broke out at a hotel on Mirza Ghalib Street in central Kolkata early Wednesday morning.
The Kolkata police on Thursday disclosed the identities of all nine persons killed in the fire incident at the hotel building.
Of the nine killed, seven are nationals of Bangladesh, one from Giridih in neighbouring Jharkhand state and one from Siliguri in Darjeeling district in North Bengal.
The police, in a statement, have also disclosed the passport numbers of the seven Bangladeshi citizens killed in the fire. The nine deceased persons include six males, two females and one child.
Four among these seven Bangladeshi citizens are from the same family. They are Debasish Dutta (39); his wife, Afsana Shirmiin (27); their toddler son, Swarnasish Dutta; and Afsana’s father Mohammad Akram Ali (74).
They had come to Kolkata for Akram’s medical treatment and were residents of Kushtia district in Bangladesh.
The fifth Bangladeshi victim was identified as Babu Ahmed (37), a resident of Dhaka. The other two are Rebati Sarker, a female, and M Alimuzzaman, both residents of Kaliganj in Bangladesh. Their ages have not been disclosed by the city police.
Meanwhile, citing relatives, local media on Thursday reported that Alimuzzaman and Rebati had gone to Kolkata for treatment and lost their lives in the hotel fire.
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday launched a scathing attack against the previous Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government over the fire incident, describing the mishap as a result of constant negligence and carelessness by the previous administration.
Separately, the Indian High Commissioner on Thursday called on Bangladesh’s Finance Minister, Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, with the two sides discussing economic cooperation and development projects between the two countries.
Following the meeting, the Indian High Commission in Dhaka took to X and posted: “High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi paid a courtesy call on the Honourable Minister of Finance and Planning of Bangladesh, Mr. Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, and held discussions on matters of mutual interest such as economic cooperation and bilateral development projects between India and Bangladesh.”