Police arrest 9 scrap dealers for Deonar fires

Multiple instances of fire at Deonar’s dumping ground had caused tremendous strain on the city’s already weak air quality. Weeks after the fires had started, the Deonar Police managed to make the first arrest in connection with the fires.

After the fires broke out multiple times in January and again on March 20, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had ordered a high level probe by Additional Commissioner Manoj Lohiya. Detailed investigation by Lohiya’s team led them to believe that the fires were a handiwork of nearby scrap dealers.

According to the Police, the scrap dealers had set up illegal shops right next the Deonar dumping ground’s walls in a bid to discover leftover metal objects in the heaps of garbage.

The scrap dealers used to send children for the collection and had instructed them to light the garbage on fire to make the job of finding metal ‘easier’.

It is believed that one of these fires were responsible for triggering a bigger one that eventually engulfed the city in smog.

So far, the Police have nabbed nine scrap dealers and booked them under various sections for negligence, mischief by fire and causing damage to public property of the Indian Penal Code.

The arrests were made late Friday night.