KOLKATA: Two elderly brothers, who were ailing and could not walk without help, suffocated to death early on Sunday after a fire broke out inside their room following a short circuit in an electric heating pad. The incident happened at Beliaghata’s R L Mitra Road.The two brothers, Shyamsundar Ghosh (82) and Golokbihari Ghosh (78), lived in a one-bedroom flat on the ground floor of a four-storey building.Shyamsundar was bedridden with severe pneumonia for the past one month, while Golokbihari had suffered fractures on both his legs recently.They had a nurse to take care of them. She used to come around 8am and left at 9pm after feeding the two brothers. The nurse used to lock the flat from outside and keep the neighbours in loop about the health condition of the two.Preliminary probe revealed that an electric heating pad, which the brothers were using, had a short circuit and the mattress somehow caught fire.“It looks like the two had asphyxiated. However, we have sent the bodies for post-mortem to find out the exact reason and time of death,” said a senior officer of Beliaghata police station.According to other flat owners, another ground-floor resident was the first to notice smoke coming out of the room around 6.45am. Later, she alerted other residents of the building.“I saw smoke coming out from under the door. I knew that both the occupants were elderly and unwell, and immediately alerted my husband and other residents. Since the door was bolted from outside, we opened it and found the entire room covered in thick black smoke. We put water on the bed and tried to wake up the two brothers. But none of them was moving. It seems they had choked to death in sleep,” said Bandana Patra, the neighbour. The residents called the cops who took the two men to NRS hospital, where they were declared dead. Neighbours said they found the electric hot bag plugged in, but the fire might also have started from a mosquito coil since there were burnt particles of it.Neighbours said the two bought the flat only six months ago with all the money they had after years of savings.“The two were very soft-spoken. While the elder brother was sick since the day he came in, the younger brother had suffered a fracture after falling down at a local market,” said another neighbour.

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