Shibpur, Feb. 7: A promoter in Howrah has been accused of burning alive a defiant tenant by feeding cooking gas into a room through a drainpipe hole and then lighting a fire.

A 40-year-old homemaker has been charred to death, while her husband and teenage daughter are battling for their lives. Her son is also in hospital.

If the modus operandi eventually matches the initial allegations, the murder will go down as one of the foulest and the method of eviction the most diabolical.

The eight-foot-by-six-foot room housed the family of Ram Bahadur Shaw in Shibpur in Howrah, less than 10km from Calcutta.

Police are suspecting “foul play” by landlord-turned-promoter Kashinath Jaiswal, who apparently had warned the family of dire consequences if they did not vacate the house located in a slum where he wanted to build a four-storey structure.

Kashinath Jaiswal, Deepali

Ram Bahadur’s wife Kewala Devi, 40, was declared brought dead at Howrah District Hospital while her husband, 50, daughter Deepali, 13, and son Dilesh, 15, were admitted with burn injuries. Ram Bahadur and Deepali have suffered 90 per cent burns.

Jaiswal has been arrested. But his wife Leena said: “My husband is innocent.”

Neighbours claimed they saw a 5kg LPG cylinder with an attached tube snaking into the Shaws’ room when they spotted the fire around 3.30am today.

They said they doused the gas cylinder with water, detached it from the pipe and kept it some metres away, fearing that it might explode.

Jubo Malik, a neighbour who stays on the first floor of a four-storey building, said: “We were stunned to notice a pipe attached to the LPG cylinder lying beside the drain.”

The police said the discovery of the cylinder and the tube corroborated the neighbours’ claim that someone had pumped in the gas and then lit the fire.

“Acting on the FIR lodged by the victim’s eldest son Hridesh, we have started a murder case. We have evidence to suggest that the landlord and a local milkman, Amarnath Prasad, had threatened the family with dire consequences if they refused to leave the house,” said Niraj Singh, the Howrah police superintendent.

“The duo were arrested and we suspect foul play. It seems to be an act of conspiracy to evict the family. A forensic team visited the spot and collected samples,” he said. “The claim that LPG was pumped in and then the room set on fire is being investigated.”

Two adjoining rooms, one of which was vacant, also caught fire, but no one was injured.

D. Sengupta, the director of the state forensic science laboratory, said gas from the cylinder might be one of the causes of the blaze. “We have collected the gas cylinder, pipe and other burnt items. The presence of the tube and the cylinder close by is an indication that the fire might have been caused by LPG gas. We are probing all angles,” he said.

According to explosives experts, gas from a 5kg cylinder is more than enough to cause fire and fatalities in a small room. “A spark could cause a fire to spread rapidly, depending on the amount of inflammable material inside the room,” said Anand Kumar, a former director of the Centre for Fire, Environment and Explosive Safety, New Delhi.

The fire would consume oxygen in the room and certain burning materials could produce toxic fumes, he said. “Either the fire or lack of oxygen could kill people inside,” Kumar added.

Preliminary investigation revealed that Jaiswal wanted to construct a multi-storey building on four cottahs that included the slum where 12 tenants had been living for several decades.

The Shaw family is one of the tenants. The landlord had been pressuring the occupants to vacate the premises — which fall in a prized area of Howrah — but the tenants, especially the Shaws, refused to do so.

Ram Bahadur, who used to supply bread, has been staying there for the past 45 years. Sons Hridesh and Dilesh are students of Class XI and IX, respectively, while Deepali studies in Class VI.

Hridesh — who used to spend nights at his private tutor’s house over the past couple of months after the electricity line was disconnected by the landlord — said Jaiswal and his associate Amarnath had been threatening his family.

“The landlord disconnected the electricity line three months ago. When we protested, he threatened to kill everyone in the family if we refused to leave the house,” he added.

Malik, the neighbour, was the first to notice thick smoke billowing out of Ram Bahadur’s house. Woken by Malik’s cry for help, some neighbours poured water from windows of their flats on the house.

But the flames leapt from the Shaws’ room to two adjoining rooms. “As soon as I came down, I saw Ram Bahadur and Dilesh emerging from the burning room,” Malik recounted. “Ram Bahadur was wearing a lungi and was covered in flames. It was a dreadful sight.”

Malik entered Ram Bahadur’s room after wrapping himself in a bed sheet soaked in water. “I brought Dilesh and Deepali out but could not save Kewala,” said Malik, who suffered burn injuries on his hands.