Seven killed, scores injured in crackers related incidents on Diwali

At least seven people were killed and scores of others injured across the country in fireworks related incidents, including gutting of houses and shops, on Diwali, though the decline in such casualties continued in the national capital.

It was a busy night for the firefighters with the Delhi Fire Service (DFS) alone responding to over 300 calls, including fires at garbage dumps due to bursting crackers, officials said on Monday.

Hundreds of patients with burns, eye injuries and breathing problems were attended to by hospitals in the country. According to Sawai Man Singh Hospital in Jaipur, 498 such patients arrived in its OPD department out of which 142 were admitted and 108 were emergency cases.

As many as 31 patients have been treated for burn injuries sustained while bursting crackers at the Kilpauk Government Medical College Hospital in Chennai. Among them was a young man whose thumb and index finger were partially amputated.

Diwali revelry took a tragic turn in Kolkata when a five-year-old boy, Adi Das of Haridevpur area, and 40-year-old Deep Kumar Koley of Kasba died when they were hit on the neck by fragments of clay flowerpot crackers in separate incidents, police said.

Eyewitnesses claimed that the child was not lighting the firework and was only passing by with one of his relatives when the explosion took place and he was hit by the shrapnel.

Koley, on the other hand, was himself lighting the firework, a police officer said.

Three persons were charred to death in a fire at a crackers shop in Chhattisgarh's Kondagaon district, police said.

The mishap took place in Kashi Sen's shop in Makdi village late Sunday night, a local police official said. The dead were identified as Sen and his two friends, Balram Netam and Shivlal Shrimali, who had pitched in to help him due to heavy rush of customers and had stayed at shop after it closed.

In Odisha, a person was hacked to death in Bhubaneswar allegedly for bursting fireworks while another person was charred to death in Keonjhar district in a blaze triggered by firecrackers on Sunday night