Heritage KJP Girl's school reduced to ashes, boarders safe

A major fire broke out at the Khasi Jaintia Presbyterian Girls Higher Secondary school in Shillong in the early hours of Sunday, reducing the heritage building to ashes, police said on Sunday.

There was no report of any casualty in the fire, they said.

The woodwork frame of the school building built in the late 1800s aided the fire to spread and initial reports indicated that the fire broke out at around 2 am, the police said.

The boarders residing in the adjacent building were all safe and have been temporarily shifted to the community hall of Mission Compound locality, officials said.

Police said fire tenders were deployed from the headquarters here to fight the inferno and help save lives.

Being the only school for girls in the Northeast over a century ago, the KJP Girls' Higher Secondary School celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2017.

The school was an offshoot of an erstwhile school established by the Welsh missionaries at Nongsawlia village in Sohra (erstwhile Cherrapunjee), where it was converted into a proper school in 1864.

The school became an exclusive school for girls in 1892 when a missionary of the Welsh Presbyterian Mission Society took over the administration of the school.