India, June 5 -- Two large restaurants on its top storey, a major electronics showroom in its basement, and more than 210 shops selling highly flammable goods - and yet Link Square, the shopping complex in Bandra reduced to cinders on April 29, did not have a working fire-fighting system.

Moreover, the fire-fighting system installed in the shopping complex was a manual one, not an automated system, another crucial flaw. Worse, even the manual system was non-operational.

These were the highlights of an internal inquiry report prepared by the Mumbai Fire Brigade, which investigated the massive blaze that broke out in the Croma showroom in the basement in the wee hours of April 29. The fire quickly spread to the upper storeys, taking 12 ho...