Fire at Yavatmal co-op bank head office; documents gutted

Documents, computers and furniture were gutted in a fire at the head office of Yavatmal District Central Cooperative Bank Ltd (YDCCB) in the wee hours of Thursday, a bank officer said.

The fire broke out on the first floor of the main building of YDCCB at around 2 am and the on-duty watchman, who noticed the flames, immediately contacted the fire brigade and also senior bank officials.

Over 40 computers, old documents and furniture were gutted in the blaze, YDCCB Chief Officer Aravind Deshpande said.

A process is on to ascertain the exact damage, he said.

Two sections, dealing with agriculture and banking, suffered most of the damage, Deshpande said, adding documents dating back over 10 years ago were gutted.

Fire tenders reached the spot and doused the flames, he said.

Deshpande claimed a short-circuit caused the blaze.

However, this could not be verified from fire brigade officials.

"Our data centre is safe and hence the functioning of the bank won't be affected," Deshpande said, adding data from YDCCB's branches can be brought together to reconstruct the documents lost in the inferno.

"Banking operations were carried out today as usual on the ground floor which was unaffected," Deshpande added.