Explosion in scrap shop in Thane leaves three injured; building evacuated, BDDS called in

Thane: Three persons, including a 10-year-old boy, were injured in an explosion, apparently caused by leakage of LPG from a cylinder, at a scrap shop in Mumbra area of Maharashtra's Thane city on Saturday morning, a civic official said.

Following the incident that occurred around 6 am on the ground floor shop in a four-storey residential building 'Mudhal Park', its residents have been evacuated and moved to a safer place, he said.

As the cause of the blast is yet to be known, the authorities have called in the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) for investigation, the official said.

"Around 6 am, there was an explosion in the scrap shop on the ground floor of the building located in Chand Nagar area. The intensity of the explosion so big that an adjoining building was also affected with several shops there getting damaged," chief of the Thane Municipal Corporation's Regional Disaster Management Cell (RDMC) Yasin Tadvi said.

The building where the explosion took place was vacated. Around 160 people reside in the building. While many of them ran out after the blast, more than 70 others were rescued and the building was sealed, he said.

"It was found that a commercial cooking gas cylinder was kept in the scrap shop. Although the cylinder did not explode as it is still intact, it is suspected that the blast was caused by leakage of gas. But the exact reason is still not known and efforts to ascertain it are on. The BDDS has been called in," Tadvi added.

A wall of the scrap shop collapsed due to the explosion and two neighbouring shops suffered damages. One car and a rickshaw parked nearby also suffered huge damages.

After the incident, the building has developed cracks and it is in a precarious condition, he said. Three residents of the building, identified as Azhar Sheikh (40), Arshu Sayyed (10) and Zeenat Mulani (50), suffered minor injuries in the incident, the official said.