A Decade After One Of Kerala’s Deadliest Fireworks Tragedy, The Survivors Of Puttingal Carry Wounds That Time Has Not HealedA blast. Then silence. Then screams. That is how 56-year-old retired police officer Firosh Khan remembers the moment the Kollam Puttingal Devi temple fire turned a night of celebration into one of Kerala’s deadliest tragedies.
On April 10, 2016, what began as a fireworks display spiralled into a catastrophic explosion, killing 110 people and injuring 656 others. For a brief second after the blast, there was pin-drop silence, an unnatural pause that seemed to swallow everything whole. And then, the cries began. People called out for help, for their loved ones, for any way out of the chaos.A decade later, that sequence has not faded. It returns without warning, in fragments of memory and in sleep.
Survivors like Firosh continue to live not just with physical disabilities, but with memories that refuse to heal.Firosh was posted at Paravur police station that night. He had been preparing to leave for personal work when duty held him back, a decision that would alter his life. “I heard the explosion and rushed towards the temple compound,” he recalls. “Then a second blast threw me to the ground. When I opened my eyes, bodies and body parts were scattered everywhere.
That scene will stay with me forever,” he said.The second explosion left him paralysed from the waist down, with severe injuries to his spine, leg and shoulders. Months of hospitalisation, surgeries and rehabilitation followed. He eventually returned to service, carrying on quietly until his retirement in May 2025.“People advised me to undergo cosmetic procedures to erase the scars. But I see them as part of my duty.
The pain remains, but life must go on.”If Firosh lives with what he saw, Lalu BS lives with what refuses to let him rest. “I lost my sleep after the incident,” he says. “Even now, I wake up suddenly, terrified. My family worries about my health, but I don’t know how to cope with it.”Both his legs were shattered in the blast, leaving him permanently disabled. Though he later resumed work as a section officer at the Public Service Commission in Kollam, mobility remains a daily struggle.
Reconstructive surgery has left the skin on his feet thin and extremely sensitive.In a cruel twist, Lalu had not even planned to attend the fireworks that night. “I reached the temple compound just minutes before the blast,” he says. “The second explosion came soon after. I remember the burning smell, the screams, the confusion. I wanted to run, I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t even move.” He had attended the festival for a decade.
Now, he tries to forget it, but memory resists. The trauma has outlived the injuries.
Nights are the hardest, when the body rests but the mind does not.For Shaji Dharan, the blast altered the course of his life entirely. A close friend of Lalu, Shaji had been working in Dubai and had returned home on leave. He had just three days left before flying back when the explosion took his right hand. “I had everything planned,” he says.
“But after the incident, nothing was the same. I lost my hand, my job and the life I had built.” The injury ended his chances of returning abroad, pushing him into financial uncertainty.
Today, he runs a small stationery shop outside his house, rebuilding life in ways he had never imagined.For Subendran C, a construction labourer, survival itself was a prolonged struggle. Sitting just metres from the explosion site with friends and relatives, he was thrown nearly 30 metres by the impact.
He suffered over 60% burns and multiple fractures and was among the last to be discharged from hospital.“When I regained consciousness, my relatives were injured and my friends were gone,” he says. “People like us don’t have the luxury to rest. I had to recover and get back to work.” Even now, the damage lingers. The skin on his legs remains sensitive, and the anniversary unsettles him each year.“I don’t know how life is moving forward,” he says.
“But it is.”The Puttingal fire did more than claim lives. It shattered families, displaced livelihoods, and damaged 358 houses, exposing glaring lapses in safety regulation around fireworks displays.A decade on, the legal process continues. The Kollam crime branch has chargesheeted 59 accused in the case, of whom 15 have since died. The scale of the investigation reflects the magnitude of the tragedy—over 1,400 witnesses, thousands of documents, and hundreds of material exhibits.For special public prosecutor K P Jabbar, the case extends beyond individual culpability. “This is not just about identifying who is guilty,” he says. “It is about setting a precedent. Public events involving explosives demand strict enforcement of safety norms. If this leads to greater awareness and compliance, at least some purpose is served.”
