The Mumbai Police on Sunday made four new arrests in the Deonar dumping ground fire case from March, bringing the total arrests over the weekend to 13. The police said the nine people who were arrested on Saturday were also responsible for the fire that broke out in the dumping ground in January.

The police claimed the accused had employed ragpickers, some of them children, to start the fire so it would be easier for them to extract metal from the dump, PTI reported. "The nine accused, who were arrested yesterday [on Saturday], are found to be involved in both the fires," a police officer told PTI.

Two major fires at the dumping ground, one in March and the other in January, had caused major pollution concerns in the city. The subsequent smog and haze had led to a spike in diseases in the areas nearby and brought sharply into focus the precarious conditions at the massive dump, which has largely been invisible to the city's elite.