At least 100 people were killed yesterday when flames engulfed a crowded trade fair in the north Indian city of Meerut, police said.
"At least 100 people are dead," said Rajiv Sabarwal, police chief at Meerut, 80km north of New Delhi.
Witnesses said bodies were charred beyond recognition and scattered throughout the stalls of the exhibition ground.
Badly burnt bodies of men, women and children had been dumped in the back of trucks, police inspector Rakesh Tomar said, adding that the death toll could rise much higher.
Television footage showed blackened steel frames were all that remained of the tents that had been erected at the fair.
Plumes of thick black smoke billowed into the air as rescue workers tried to get the injured to hospital.
"We have so far removed 45 bodies to the mortuary," police chief Raj Kumar Vishwakarma told Star news television.
Paramilitary troops backed firefighters and police tackling the massive fire, he said.
The blaze destroyed three giant exhibition tents at the Brand India Fair at the city's Victoria Park where companies displayed products for throngs of shoppers.
Confusion reigned as large crowds milled around the stalls in Meerut, which has a population of more than 1 million people and is well-known as the site of the outbreak of the 1857 mutiny against British rule.
The fire was the worst such accident since 90 schoolchildren were killed in a fire in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in July 2004 that whipped through classrooms.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze, though a local politician, Laxmikant Bajpai, told the TV station Headlines Today that it may have started when plastic sheeting hanging over an air-conditioning unit caught fire.
Thousands of people had been expected yesterday, the last day of the fair, to see the washing machines, stereos and other electronic goods on display.
Trade fairs, where manufacturers and traders set up stalls to exhibit their wares to consumers and other businesses, are common in India.
They are normally held in elaborate cloth tents set up over interconnected bamboo poles -- and are often constructed with little regard for safety regulations.
RSS