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Twenty-Five Die in Indian Mental Asylum Blaze, Nation Shocked
MADRAS, India, Aug 6 (News Agencies) - A fire tore through a privately-run mental asylum Monday in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, killing 25 inmates, many of whom had been chained to their beds.
The asylum was one of more than a dozen located in the Muslim pilgrimage town of Erwadi, where a shrine is believed to hold curative powers for people suffering from mental illnesses.
"Police at the scene have so far recovered 25 bodies which were charred beyond recognition," police inspector Palai Swamy said from nearby Ramanathapuram town, 500 300 miles south of state capital Madras.
Eleven of the victims were women.
Swamy said the fire broke out early Monday and engulfed the "asylum," which was little more that a hut with a thatched roof.
"Only a few people managed to escape," he said, confirming reports that many of the inmates had been chained up for the night.
Forty-six inmates were in the building when the fire broke out. Eighteen were rescued, of whom five were taken to hospital with serious burns.
Staff said they believed three inmates managed to flee.
The state government promised measures to improve the quality of such facilities.
"The government will take steps to modernize and streamline all asylums here," state Labor Minister Anwar Raja said, as reports of the tragedy shocked India and messages condemning the existing facilities poured in.
"Steps will also be taken to regulate administrations of all the asylums being run by private parties," Raja said at the site littered with grotesquely-charred bodies of mentally-challenged patients.
The police said they were checking a claim of the owner of the burned asylum, Syed Mohideen Pasha, who cited staff members as saying a gang had set fire to the asylum.
Pasha and four others have already been arrested for negligence in connection with the fire.
"Action will be also taken against the asylum owners who did not provide adequate facility for the inmates," said area police chief Sanjeev Kumar.
He said families are charged up to 20,000 rupees (430 dollars) a year for their relatives to stay at such facilities.
"The cause of the fire is under investigation. There are two versions: One that the fire was caused after a lighted lamp was knocked down, or some person had thrown a (lit) cigarette butt," Kumar said, while adding the reports of arson were not being ruled out.
Reporters at the site said the corpses of nearly all those who died were still manacled to their beds after the fire had been put out.
District administrator S. Vijayakumar said nine people were rescued.
Erwadi has a poor reputation for its treatment of the mentally ill.
The "asylums" in the town are mostly huts with no specialized facility or trained staff.
Some are converted private houses, whose owners provide room and board to the mentally ill brought to Erwadi for a cure by their relatives. Many of them are eventually abandoned as mental sickness is considered a stigma in India.
Earlier this year there was a report of 10 people being battered to death in one such asylum.
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