A 28-year-old man died on Sunday night, July 31 after an air conditioner installed in his house located in Chennai’s Thiru Vi Ka Nagar exploded. The man has been identified as Shyam, who ran a shop selling milk in the same area. His wife, Dhanalakshmi (24), had gone to her parents house in Nungambakkam and Shyam was sleeping alone in the ground floor of his house when the accident occured. His father Prabhakaran heard a loud explosion from the ground floor at around 8 pm and rushed downstairs to see smoke fill the house. He also saw that Shyam’s room was on fire.
The fire department personnel from Sembium and Madhavaram rushed to the spot, put out the fire and recovered Shyam’s body. The Thiru Vi Ka Nagar police arrived at the spot after receiving information about the accident and sent Shyam’s body to the Kilpauk Medical College (KMC) Hospital for a post-mortem. An FIR has been registered under section 174 (enabling police to enquire and report on suicide, etc) of the Criminal Procedure Code and an investigation is underway.
TNM spoke to a fire department personnel who said, “There was a short circuit in the air conditioner and the television in the room which might have caused the explosion. Shyam had locked the door before sleeping, which might have made it difficult for him to escape.” He added that Shyam was already dead when the fire department had arrived on the scene of the accident and the exact cause of the death will be known after the post-mortem.
Speaking to TNM, a police officer from the Thiru Vi Ka police station said that officials from the Electricity Board (EB) arrived at the scene of the accident and have taken the electronics for further inspection and will be sent for forensic analysis as well. He added, “We are aware that the explosion was caused due to a short circuit in the electronics but we want to determine whether it was caused by high voltage or something else. We will know more details after we receive the forensic analysis and the post-mortem report and proceed with investigations accordingly."