A 15-year-old girl died after suffering burn injuries under mysterious circumstances at Howrah's Bantra on Tuesday. Police have started a probe.
Police said that Binita Puri, a Class IX student and resident of Hooghly's Pandua, was visiting her maternal uncle Kalachand Puri's house at Brindavan Mullick Lane at Bantra.
Kalachand lives on the ground floor of a highrise building. His wife Seema Puri was cooking when Binita suddenly shouted from inside the toilet. When everybody rushed in, she was found aflame. To save Binita, her aunt Seema rushed to her and tried to douse the fire by wrapping a cloth around her. Seema, too, sustained serious burns. Both were rushed to Howrah district hospital, where Binita was declared dead. Kalachand, who runs a cable business, was not at home then.
Seema was later shifted to SSKM in critical condition. Doctors said that she had sustained about 60% burns. Binita's father Bimal Puri runs a tea stall at Pandua.
Police find the incident baffling. The relatives told them that there was probably a gas leak when Seema was cooking. The police wonder how, if Binita was in the toilet and Seema in the kitchen, did the former catch fire? Police are probing all angles.
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Particularly, because Binita's father runs a tea stall. Let me explain.
My hypothesis would be that extremely high phosphorus concentration in the body could cause spontaneous combustion. It might be difficult to test this hypothesis but the word is out there.
Well, why would the body have an elevated phosphorus in the first place? After all, the body is supposed to excrete the excess amounts. It turns out that people with renal failure have a problem with phosphorus excretion and have to watch its intake.
Some teas are indeed very high in phosphorus content (e.g., parsley, red clover - and probably red phosphorus tea, as the name suggests).
Maybe the girl had problems with her kidneys and indulged in - or was encouraged to drink - high amounts of such teas. Maybe even drank lots of soft drink on top of that. Could that have caused the accident?
Just wondering...