A day after a blast at a firecracker factory here killed 23 people, families of the victims seethed with anger at the district administration for failing to shut down the unit which the police Thursday said operated illegally.
At the government hospital, relatives shouted slogans against the state government.
Some members of the families of killed in the Wednesday afternoon explosion in Gurdaspur district's Batala, blocked Deputy Commissioner Vipul Ujjwal's vehicle.
This incident happened because of the administration, said a local resident whose sister-in-law and her three-year-old son died in the blast.
The relative said the factory's licence had already expired. We raised this issue with the administration but nothing happened, he said.
What inquiry will the government conduct now, a protester asked, demanding that a case of murder should now be registered against officials who let the factory run illegally.
Local residents said a blast at the same factory in January 2017 killed a worker and injured three others.
They claimed they have filed several complaints seeking the closure of the factory, located amid homes and shops in Guru Ram Das Colony on Jalandhar Road.
When asked whether a firecracker factory was allowed in a residential area, Batala Senior Superintendent of Police Opinderjit Singh said, Definitely not.
He said he was not aware of the factory earlier. "Had we known about it, we would have shut it down, he told reporters. The licence of this factory expired in 2013.
Singh said the police are now checking other factories for licences.
The Punjab police registered a case under section 304 (culpable homicide) of the IPC and the Explosives Act against the owners.
The Punjab government has already ordered a magisterial inquiry into the blast that brought down the factory, blew the roofs off some adjacent buildings and damaged vehicles parked nearby.
Earlier in the day, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), sifting through the rubble for any survivors or bodies, called off the operation.
The victims in Wednesday's explosion included factory workers, members of the owners' families and some passersby, officials said.
On Thursday, the police said apart from the 23 dead, there were 18 injured in the blast. Seven severely injured were referred to the Amritsar medical college.
BJP national secretary Tarun Chugh asked the Congress government in the state to disclose on which politician's directions the factory was allowed to operate.
Congress MP Partap Singh Bajwa and the party's state unit chief Sunil Jakhar criticised the local administration.
Local residents said after the original factory owner Satnam Singh's death, it was split into four units run by his sons Jaspal Singh, Paramjit Singh, Harbhajan Singh and Ravil Singh.
Satnam Singh had a permit to run the factory but this was not renewed by the administration after his death, police said.
The production units-cum-shops were in the front and the families lived at the back, according to Baljit Singh, who knows the owners.
He said the owners stocked raw material in large quantities ahead of festivals like Dussehra, Gurpurab and Diwali, and the firecrackers were delivered not only in Punjab but in Himachal Pradesh too.
After the 2017 blast, the owners had agreed to shift the factory elsewhere and only maintain their offices in the busy locality that also houses a gurdwara, a temple and a private school, residents said.
But just a few months later, firecrackers were being manufactured again at the same location, they said.
Batala Bar Association president Raghubir Singh Sandhu, who stays in the same locality, said no action was taken on his complaints.
"Along with other residents of locality, I requested the administration after the 2017 incident to shift this firecracker factory outside the city. But all in vain," he said.
Gurdaspur Deputy Commissioner Vipul Ujwal said 19 bodies have been identified so far.
Five of the dead were from the families of the owners. They were identified as Surinder Singh, Paramjit Singh, Onkar Singh, Vikramjit Singh, and Rajinderpal Singh.
Eleven others worked at the factory. The police identified them as Shamlal, Mukha, Balkar Singh, Lakha Singh, Balkar, Tarlok Singh, Sonu, Manpreet Singh, Alia, Vinay and Lalli.
Three local residents -- Bimala Rani, Ramandeep Kaur and Pahulpreet Singh also died in the blast. Congress Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa urged the Punjab government to register cases against the officials responsible for the tragedy.
If the responsibility of any official is not fixed, this kind of incidents will continue to happen in the future as well, he said.
Gurdaspur MP Sunny Deol flew down from Mumbai to meet the injured.
Deol, who was accompanied by Punjab BJP Chief Shwait Malik, demanded strict action against guilty officials.
Punjab's Rural Development and Panchayat Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa also visited the site.
The state government has announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each to the relatives of those killed and Rs 50,000 for each of the seven severely injured.