Kolkata: Two people suffocated to death while a few others were injured in a desparate bid to save themselves when a fire broke out at Golden Park Hotel on Ho Chi Minh Sarani in the early hours of Thursday. The US consulate and the British deputy high commission are also located in the area.

At least 10 fire tenders took more than four hours to bring the situation under control.

Thirty-one people, including guests and hotel staffers, were rescued by fire fighters and a disaster management team.

Hotel owner B.S. Gujral and manager Gautam Majumdar were arrested by Shakespeare Sarani police station, which launched an FIR on the basis of a complaint lodged by the station officer of the fire department, Somnath Pramanik.

The two deceased were identified as Anup Agarwal,  53, from Surat in Gujarat and Chamar Kishan, 52, from Sundargarh in Odisha.

Both were employees of Tata Steel Ltd, and were declared brought dead when taken to nearby SSKM Hospital.

“It seems that they died of asphyxia as the smoke from the kitchen spread to other parts of the hotel through the ducts of the centralised air-conditioning system," a fire department official said, adding that the exact cause of death will be ascertained only after the post-mortem.

According to fire department sources, the fire that broke out at 3.25 am probably originated from the kitchen on the ground floor of the hotel, which is situated in one of the city's high-security zones at Ho Chi Minh Sarani.

While the office of the British deputy high commission is on the opposite side of the hotel, the US consulate office is a stone's throw from the spot. Sumit Kumar Chakraborty, a resident of Purulia, was in room number 409 when he was roused by a thick column of smoke that was starting to engulf the room.

State fire minister and mayor Sovan Chattopadhyay and senior Kolkata Municipal Corporation officials visited the site of the fire mishap.