Two days after an explosion in a building in the capital's Moghbazar, another body was recovered from the debris yesterday, raising the death toll to eight.

The victim, Harun-or-Rashid, 71, was the caretaker of the three-storey building.

Debashis Bardhan, deputy director (operations and maintenance) of Fire Service and Civil Defence, said Harun had been missing since the blast on Sunday evening. Firefighters found his body around 3:30pm while inspecting the debris on the ground floor.

"We will hand over the body to police ... ," he said.

Meanwhile, police yesterday filed a case with Ramna Police Station against unidentified people for causing deaths by negligence.

Harun Or Rashid, additional deputy commissioner of Ramna division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told journalists that they were investigating whether there was any negligence from the owner, caretakers and traders in the building.

It will also be probed whether there is any negligence in the storage or management of goods by the traders in the building, he added.

METHANE GAS BLAMED

Md Asaduzzaman, who leads the seven-member committee formed by police to investigate the cause of the explosion, yesterday said Moghbazar blast took place in presence of methane gas.

He said 12-13 percent methane gas was found at the spot by testing with a gas detector machine.

"Initially, I guess that the accumulated gas came in contact with air and formed an explosive mixture which caused a huge explosion," he said.

Huge blasts occur only if the mixer is more than 15 percent, he added.

"Now the probe committee is trying to find out the source of the gas," Asaduzzaman, also the chief of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit, told reporters while inspecting the spot.

He said they would disclose the cause of the explosion in details later.

Explosive experts from the CTTC's Bomb Disposal Unit were with him.

Responding to another query, he said they did not find any evidence of IED.

Md Tanjid, a rickshaw-van puller, yesterday said around an hour before the blast, when he took some electronic items from an appliance store on the first floor of the building, he smelt gas.

Six people were found dead after the incident on Sunday, while another died of his injuries Monday morning. More than 50 people suffered injuries with many of them in three buses stuck in traffic jam on the busy Outer Circular Road.

Due to the explosion, windows of many nearby buildings shattered while broken pieces of bricks, walls, shutters and other items flew to the nearby road, causing injuries.

Samanta Lal Sen, coordinator of Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery, yesterday told this paper that five people were being treated at the institute. Three of them with around 90 percent burns were fighting for their lives in the ICU.