IMPHAL, Mar 28: At least ten shops and six houses were gutted by a fire that broke out at North A.O.C. opposite to the Big Chill restaurant near the public toilet in the evening today around 5:37.
Besides destroying properties of the shops and household properties no casualties was report due to the arson.
However Properties worth several lacs were destroyed by the conflagration that razed for more than an hour before three firefighters were pressed into service to douse the fire and prevent it from spreading further on.
The actual source of what ignited the fire could not be ascertained but speculation was doing the round that the inferno that consumed a string of shops, mostly rice hotels located on the western fringe of DM College, was from the fire that was set to burn off garbage by the local residents.
