The blaze broke out in the early hours of Wednesday morning at Tangerang jail, when most of the prisoners were asleep. Apparently, there were approximately 122 inmates staying in block C, the prison block that was affected. The block housed inmates held for drug-related offences.

It is reported that the police are investigating the cause of blaze at Tangerang jail in which at least 41 people died and 73 were hurt.  A fire tore through an overcrowded block in a jail in Indonesia’s western Banten province, killing at least 41 people and injuring dozens, a government spokesperson and media reports said.

The fire, which broke out between 1 to 2am local time on Wednesday at the Tangerang Prison, has been extinguished and authorities are still evacuating the facility, said Rika Aprianti, a spokesperson of the corrections department of the law and human rights ministry.

Investigators from the fire department said that they are also looking at the defective electrical wiring as a source of the fire. Those who were injured were taken to two hospitals in Tangerang while those who were unharmed were taken to a different facility within the prison complex, according to the Beritasatu news website.