Tipsy man dies after cigarette butt triggers fire in house

Prabhu Francis (39), was found dead at his house in Sripuram Colony near Kathipara flyover. It is alleged that a cigarette butt fell out of his hands on to the mattress causing fire. The police suspect he was in an inebriated condition. The Fire and Rescue personnel who arrived at the spot found at least 20 cigarette butts strewn on the mattress. “At first we checked if it was short circuit from the air-conditioner which started the fire, but it was running when we entered the room. Then we thought the fire started from the phone which was being charged. But we suspect that the fire slowly started and spread from a cigarette butt,” a police source said. 

“Prabhu is suspected to have been drinking at the time of the fire, because he never managed to get out of the room and save himself. The immediate cause of death is suffocation. He had also suffered 40 per cent burns. The fire also started slowly and it was not a blast or burst,” said the police source. Prabhu’s family lived on the first floor of the house while the ground floor was rented out, he was unemployed. The fire broke out in the bedroom on the first floor. 

Prabhu’s parents were in the next bedroom while his wife had stepped out to pick their daughters from a relative’s house. A source from the Fire and Rescue department said that the family managed to douse the blaze but it restarted on the mattress when they reached the spot and had to be put out. There was a lot of smoke in the building, he added. The body was sent to Chrompet Government Hospital for a post mortem.