The Delhi Police, on 22 February, told a city court that the owner of the firecracker storage unit in Bawana industrial area, where a blast killed 17 people last month, was present there on the day of the incident and had locked the workers inside when they were working.
The submission was made by the police in its status report filed before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Gagandeep Singh in pursuance to the court's order for further investigation.
The police said it had recorded the statement of injured worker Roop Prakash who had said that Lalit Goyal, partner of main accused and factory owner Manoj Jain, and Jain’s son Aditya, were present in the premises on 20 January when the blast took place. They had locked the main gate from outside, it said.
A fire had broken out in the storage unit on the ground floor of the two-storey building in Bawana on 20 January and ripped through the structure. Of the 17 killed, 10 were women. A man and woman were also injured in the incident.
The court had earlier dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of Goyal saying the charges against him were "serious".
The police had alleged that both the accused were running the factory without licence and explosive materials were procured from outside Delhi. It had also claimed that the explosive materials were brought to the city without any permission or checking.
An FIR was registered under various provisions of the IPC relating to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and negligent conduct with respect to fire or combustible material. The maximum punishment for the offences is 10 years imprisonment.
The police also told the court that one of the supervisors of another firecracker factory, owned by the same persons, was needed to be interrogated in connection with this matter, but he has not joined the investigation despite repeated attempts.
The police said that it was also awaiting the postmortem reports of the 16 deceased persons and efforts were underway to get the details of one unidentified woman.
The court had, on 31 January, remanded the owners of the firecracker storage unit to judicial custody. Jain was arrested on 21 January and Goyal on 27 January, and sent to police custody.
(With inputs from PTI)
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