India’s Unregulated B&B, Homestay Racket Continues To Kill!
By Gajanan Khergamker
Early morning on June 3, 2026, a fire broke out at Flourish Stay, a bed and breakfast in the Hauz Rani locality of Malviya Nagar, South Delhi. At least 21 people died, and more than 40 were rescued and taken to nearby hospitals. Among the dead were 17-18 foreign nationals, reportedly from Nigeria, Mozambique, Liberia and Bangladesh.
Officials said many of the guests had travelled to Delhi not for tourism but as medical tourists or attendants of patients receiving treatment at Max Super Specialty Hospital, located minutes from the building.
These lapses turned the building into a death trap when the fire spread rapidly through the narrow five storey structure. Some trapped occupants jumped from upper floors; a woman carrying a child landed on a mattress improvised by residents who had run to a nearby bedding shop. Eight fire tenders were dispatched, and the blaze was fully extinguished after a massive rescue operation. The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation, though preliminary reports suggested it may have originated from a restaurant operating on the ground floor.
The Delhi Police have registered an FIR under charges of culpable homicide. Sources indicate that the B&B licence was valid until 2027, and a day’s stay cost between ₹2,500 and ₹3,000.
Delhi Police subsequently reviewed certificates issued to hotels across Delhi’s tourist hubs. The review produced recommendations and circulars, but no functioning mechanism emerged to prevent a property licensed for six rooms from operating 25 rooms without a fire NOC in the same city where the same failure had already killed 17 people. Seven years later, Flourish Stay burned with the same core violations, under the same regulatory framework, through the same enforcement gap.
In December 2017, fourteen people lost their lives when a fire tore through rooftop restaurants at Mumbai's Kamala Mills compound in Lower Parel, one of the city's most visible commercial and entertainment hubs. The subsequent investigations revealed a familiar catalogue of violations…unauthorised constructions, encroachments into mandatory safety spaces, obstructed evacuation routes and glaring discrepancies between approved plans and actual operations. Questions emerged not merely about how the fire started, but how establishments carrying obvious risks were allowed to continue functioning in plain sight of municipal authorities, licensing departments and enforcement agencies.
The parallels with Flourish Stay are difficult to ignore. In both cases, the immediate cause of the fire became secondary to the institutional failures that preceded it. Buildings were permitted to evolve beyond the limits of their approvals. Safety requirements existed but remained unenforced. Inspections either failed to detect violations or failed to act upon them. Commercial activity flourished while compliance became a paperwork exercise rather than a physical reality. The result was predictable; when fire finally arrived, it encountered conditions that ensured a routine emergency would become a mass-casualty event.
Kamala Mills should have served as a warning that India's urban hospitality sector faced a deeper structural problem than individual negligence. It revealed a regulatory culture in which approvals are granted, violations accumulate, notices are issued and forgotten, and enforcement often awakens only after fatalities compel public scrutiny. The Flourish Stay tragedy suggests that the lesson was noted, discussed and archived, but never institutionalised. What burned in Delhi in June 2026 was not merely a guesthouse. It was the credibility of a regulatory system that had already been shown, years earlier in Mumbai, exactly how such disasters unfold.
The problem is not confined to Delhi. It is a national condition whose geometry is consistent across every tourist destination in India. Its most documented expression outside Delhi is the coastal hospitality economy of Goa.
The infrastructure of deception required was not elaborate. It required listings on a platform that charges a commission for every completed booking and, in its standard operating procedure, does not physically verify the existence, accuracy, or legal compliance of the properties it lists before making them available for reservation. The platform’s incentive structure aligns with the fraud’s operating logic…more listings, more bookings, more commission. The accuracy of those listings, the safety compliance of those properties, and the experience of the guest who arrives to find that the villa does not exist or the B&B is a fire trap are externalities that the commission model does not account for.
The registration requirement is clear, its enforcement is not. Properties that have not registered, properties that have registered with inaccurate room counts, properties that registered with compliant facilities but operate something structurally different, and properties that describe themselves on global booking platforms with photographs and amenity lists that bear no verifiable relationship to physical reality, all of these categories exist in North Goa’s hospitality ecosystem. No tourism department official has been able to quantify their numbers with precision because the verification system that would produce a precise count does not function.
Early morning on June 3, 2026, a fire broke out at Flourish Stay, a bed and breakfast in the Hauz Rani locality of Malviya Nagar, South Delhi. At least 21 people died, and more than 40 were rescued and taken to nearby hospitals. Among the dead were 17-18 foreign nationals, reportedly from Nigeria, Mozambique, Liberia and Bangladesh.
Officials said many of the guests had travelled to Delhi not for tourism but as medical tourists or attendants of patients receiving treatment at Max Super Specialty Hospital, located minutes from the building.
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| Image is for representational purpose only |
Licenced For Six Yet Ran 25 Rooms
According to Delhi Police and media reports, Flourish Stay had been granted a licence by the Delhi government under the Bed and Breakfast scheme permitting it to operate only six rooms. Instead, the property was running around 25 operational rooms, including accommodation in the basement. The building had no Fire Safety No Objection Certificate (NOC), a mandatory requirement for commercial hospitality establishments under the National Building Code. It had only one entry-exit point and no alternative escape routes.These lapses turned the building into a death trap when the fire spread rapidly through the narrow five storey structure. Some trapped occupants jumped from upper floors; a woman carrying a child landed on a mattress improvised by residents who had run to a nearby bedding shop. Eight fire tenders were dispatched, and the blaze was fully extinguished after a massive rescue operation. The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation, though preliminary reports suggested it may have originated from a restaurant operating on the ground floor.
The Delhi Police have registered an FIR under charges of culpable homicide. Sources indicate that the B&B licence was valid until 2027, and a day’s stay cost between ₹2,500 and ₹3,000.
Seven Years Later, An Arpit Palace Repeat
This is not India’s first fatal hotel fire linked to basic safety violations. On February 2019, a fire at Hotel Arpit Palace in Karol Bagh killed 17 people. The FIR and subsequent chargesheet listed glaring lapses: No panic alarm on any floor, only one emergency exit that was locked, no proper signage guiding guests to the exit, use of highly inflammable materials for decoration, and an unauthorised kitchen in the basement. The hotel was run “like a death trap,” with the emergency exit intentionally closed and stairs blocked with laundry and bar items. The owners had submitted forged documents to obtain licences and operated a banquet hall from the basement without any licence.Delhi Police subsequently reviewed certificates issued to hotels across Delhi’s tourist hubs. The review produced recommendations and circulars, but no functioning mechanism emerged to prevent a property licensed for six rooms from operating 25 rooms without a fire NOC in the same city where the same failure had already killed 17 people. Seven years later, Flourish Stay burned with the same core violations, under the same regulatory framework, through the same enforcement gap.
In Mumbai, Just The Geography Differed
If Delhi's Flourish Stay exposed the dangers of a bed-and-breakfast operating far beyond its licensed capacity, Mumbai's Kamala Mills fire had already demonstrated nearly a decade earlier how blocked escape routes, compromised fire-safety systems and regulatory complacency can transform commercial premises into death traps. The geography differed but the pattern didn’t.In December 2017, fourteen people lost their lives when a fire tore through rooftop restaurants at Mumbai's Kamala Mills compound in Lower Parel, one of the city's most visible commercial and entertainment hubs. The subsequent investigations revealed a familiar catalogue of violations…unauthorised constructions, encroachments into mandatory safety spaces, obstructed evacuation routes and glaring discrepancies between approved plans and actual operations. Questions emerged not merely about how the fire started, but how establishments carrying obvious risks were allowed to continue functioning in plain sight of municipal authorities, licensing departments and enforcement agencies.
The parallels with Flourish Stay are difficult to ignore. In both cases, the immediate cause of the fire became secondary to the institutional failures that preceded it. Buildings were permitted to evolve beyond the limits of their approvals. Safety requirements existed but remained unenforced. Inspections either failed to detect violations or failed to act upon them. Commercial activity flourished while compliance became a paperwork exercise rather than a physical reality. The result was predictable; when fire finally arrived, it encountered conditions that ensured a routine emergency would become a mass-casualty event.
Kamala Mills should have served as a warning that India's urban hospitality sector faced a deeper structural problem than individual negligence. It revealed a regulatory culture in which approvals are granted, violations accumulate, notices are issued and forgotten, and enforcement often awakens only after fatalities compel public scrutiny. The Flourish Stay tragedy suggests that the lesson was noted, discussed and archived, but never institutionalised. What burned in Delhi in June 2026 was not merely a guesthouse. It was the credibility of a regulatory system that had already been shown, years earlier in Mumbai, exactly how such disasters unfold.
Fire Data That Activates After The Blaze
The broader pattern is visible in Delhi Fire Services data, though some earlier media figures have been corrected. In the first two and a half months of 2025, Delhi Fire Services reported 6 deaths in January, 2 in February, and 4 by March 11, totalling 12 fatalities compared with the same period in 2024, a 67.57% decline year on year. The department received 938 calls in January, 1,076 in February, and 455 by March 11, totalling 2,469 calls. These numbers, while showing a decline from 2024, still reflect a system whose enforcement is largely complaints based and often activates only after a fire has already broken out.The problem is not confined to Delhi. It is a national condition whose geometry is consistent across every tourist destination in India. Its most documented expression outside Delhi is the coastal hospitality economy of Goa.
Goa-Style Deception Built Into The Platform Model
In January 2025, Goa Police arrested four persons, namely Saurabh Duseja of Gwalior and Sayed Ali Mukhtar, Mohammad Firoz, and Mohammed Azharuddin Saif of Hyderabad, for operating a multi crore villa rental scam. The gang had been duping tourists since 2022, listing non-existent properties on Booking.com, collecting advance payments through multiple bank accounts, and using female telephone operators to build trust with victims. Over 500 tourists were cheated and the scam came to light after a Chandigarh resident, Pankaj Dhiman, complained that he had paid ₹20,000 for ‘Ruby Villa, Goa’ only to find that the villa did not exist.The infrastructure of deception required was not elaborate. It required listings on a platform that charges a commission for every completed booking and, in its standard operating procedure, does not physically verify the existence, accuracy, or legal compliance of the properties it lists before making them available for reservation. The platform’s incentive structure aligns with the fraud’s operating logic…more listings, more bookings, more commission. The accuracy of those listings, the safety compliance of those properties, and the experience of the guest who arrives to find that the villa does not exist or the B&B is a fire trap are externalities that the commission model does not account for.
Goa’s B&B and Homestay Business Is Paper Perfect
Goa’s B&B and homestay economy in North Goa, across Anjuna, Vagator, Morjim, Arambol, and the increasingly congested belt extending to Ponda, operates within a regulatory framework that exists with considerably more clarity on paper than in practice. Under the Goa Registration of Tourist Trade Act, 1982, and the Goa Registration of Tourist Trade Rules, 1985 (amended in 2021 and 2022), all homestay and B&B establishments fall under Category D and must register with the Department of Tourism. The Homestay and Bed and Breakfast Scheme 2025 outlines the registration process, requiring submission of Form XXIII, proof of ownership, safety compliance documentation, and compliance with basic hygiene and safety standards set by the Department.The registration requirement is clear, its enforcement is not. Properties that have not registered, properties that have registered with inaccurate room counts, properties that registered with compliant facilities but operate something structurally different, and properties that describe themselves on global booking platforms with photographs and amenity lists that bear no verifiable relationship to physical reality, all of these categories exist in North Goa’s hospitality ecosystem. No tourism department official has been able to quantify their numbers with precision because the verification system that would produce a precise count does not function.
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| Image is for representational purpose only |
Complaints are distributed across consumer forums, TripAdvisor and Google Reviews pages, police complaint registers, consumer court filings, the inbox of the Goa Tourism Development Corporation’s grievance cell, and social media posts of tourists who discovered on arrival that the sea facing villa of the photographs was a windowless room in a concrete building kilometres from the water. The pattern is consistent … properties listed as having amenities they do not possess, room sizes described with measurements disproved by the guest’s suitcase, and safety infrastructure such as smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, and clearly marked emergency exits photographed in common areas that the guest never sees from their room.
The review system offered by every major booking platform as the primary consumer protection mechanism is manipulable in ways that platforms acknowledge in their own terms of service while declining to remedy in operational practice. Platforms permit property operators to respond to negative reviews, flag reviews for removal on policy grounds, solicit positive reviews before guests fully experience the property, and build review averages over time by offering discounts or upgrades to guests who leave five star ratings. A guest who leaves an honest negative review about a safety violation, misrepresented room size, or absence of advertised amenities has no mechanism to escalate that review to a regulatory authority. The review lives on the platform. The platform’s interest in the review’s content is commercial, not regulatory.
India, which has among the highest Airbnb listing densities in Asia and whose hospitality economy generates a significant proportion of the platform’s South Asian revenue, is not in that top five verification programme.
The guest who books in California’s Fresno has a platform backed verification system standing between them and a fraudulent listing. The guest who books in Goa’s Anjuna has a review average and a photograph of a swimming pool.
The licence permits a specific number of rooms. The licence fee is paid on that number. The property is then effectively free to operate as many rooms as its walls and its contempt for enforcement will allow, because the inspection mechanism that should translate the licence’s room limit into a physical constraint does not function with the frequency or rigour the licence implies.
Flourish Stay operated around 25 rooms on a 6 room licence for long enough to become a listed property on a global travel platform with a review history suggesting ongoing guest satisfaction. The Fire NOC that would have required a physical safety inspection of those 25 rooms was never obtained. No inspection triggered by the absence of that NOC was ever conducted. The property remained on the platform and the commission kept flowing but 21 people died!
Overregulation did not kill 21 people in Malviya Nagar. Under-enforcement of the regulation that already existed did. The licence existed, so did the room limit, the Fire NOC requirement, and the National Building Code’s emergency exit provisions. Yet, none of them were enforced.
The argument against tighter regulation, in this context, is an argument that the existing regulation’s non-enforcement should be extended rather than corrected. That is not a tourism policy position but a statement of institutional failure dressed as economic pragmatism.
The inspection must verify:
* Room count against the licence,
* Fire NOC,
* Emergency exit availability and accessibility,
* Smoke alarm and fire extinguisher installation, and
* Structural compliance with the applicable building code’s occupancy provisions
A property that fails the inspection must be unlisted from all booking platforms within 48 hours of the failure finding, with relisting contingent on verified remediation. The platform that continues to list a property after a failure notice has been served must bear joint civil liability for any harm to guests that results from the continued listing.
The platforms will resist this and their resistance will be framed as a defence of the small operator, of economic inclusion, of digital access to the tourism economy for properties that cannot afford compliance. This framing should be treated with the same scepticism appropriate for any argument in which the party resisting accountability presents itself as the defender of the party it is actually exploiting.
Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and their domestic equivalents are not small operators. They are global technology companies whose combined market capitalisation runs into hundreds of billions of dollars. The cost of building a compliance verification API that checks a property’s current regulatory status against a government database before displaying it as bookable is not a burden that threatens their business model. It is a feature they have chosen not to build in markets where the regulatory pressure to build it does not exist.
India’s tourism authorities have the leverage to create that pressure. They have statutory authority, under existing tourism trade registration legislation in most states, to require that platform listed properties carry a valid, current registration number, and to require platforms operating in India to verify that registration number against a live government database before processing a booking.
This is not a novel regulatory concept. The European Union’s Digital Services Act, which came into full effect in February 2024, requires large platforms to implement risk based content moderation and compliance verification systems precisely because the EU determined that self regulation by commercially interested platforms was structurally inadequate to protect consumers.
India does not yet have an equivalent legislative instrument applied to the hospitality booking sector, and the absence of that instrument is the gap that the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, and every state tourism department with a registration scheme must now urgently fill.
None of those steps would have revealed that the building had no Fire NOC. None of them would have shown that 25 rooms were being operated on a 6 room licence. None of them would have indicated that the single entrance that served as the building’s only exit was also the point through which the fire would cut off escape.
The platform knew none of this because it had not checked. The government knew none of this because it had not inspected. The licence existed, the commission was collected, and the booking confirmed.
At least 21 people died in a building that the system had certified as legitimate and the market had certified as acceptable. Both certifications were wrong, and both the system and the market knew the mechanisms through which they could have been right and chose not to use them.
The Arpit Palace fire produced the same cycle in 2019. Its lessons were not institutionalised. Flourish Stay burned seven years later with the same violations, in the same city, under the same regulatory framework, through the same enforcement gap.
The only honest response to this pattern is the one that does not fit in a news cycle, which is a permanent, technology enabled, platform integrated, publicly accessible compliance verification system that makes the regulatory status of every listed accommodation visible to every prospective guest before the booking is confirmed and enforceable against every platform that profits from listings made in its absence.
At least 21 people, most of whom had come to India for medical care, deserve, at least, the acknowledgement that their deaths were not an accident of fate. They were an outcome of choices: A licence holder’s choice to operate beyond his licence, a fire authority’s choice not to enforce its NOC requirement, a platform’s choice not to verify the property’s compliance before listing it, and a regulatory system’s choice to treat tourism promotion as a priority that accommodation safety enforcement should not be allowed to complicate.
Those choices have names attached to them. The inquiry should find the names and the law should hold them.
The review system offered by every major booking platform as the primary consumer protection mechanism is manipulable in ways that platforms acknowledge in their own terms of service while declining to remedy in operational practice. Platforms permit property operators to respond to negative reviews, flag reviews for removal on policy grounds, solicit positive reviews before guests fully experience the property, and build review averages over time by offering discounts or upgrades to guests who leave five star ratings. A guest who leaves an honest negative review about a safety violation, misrepresented room size, or absence of advertised amenities has no mechanism to escalate that review to a regulatory authority. The review lives on the platform. The platform’s interest in the review’s content is commercial, not regulatory.
Airbnb’s Verification Prompt Globally, Absent In India
In 2023, Airbnb removed 59,000 fake listings globally and prevented another 1,57,000 from joining. The company announced it would implement thorough AI based verification processes for all listings in its top five markets, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Australia.India, which has among the highest Airbnb listing densities in Asia and whose hospitality economy generates a significant proportion of the platform’s South Asian revenue, is not in that top five verification programme.
The guest who books in California’s Fresno has a platform backed verification system standing between them and a fraudulent listing. The guest who books in Goa’s Anjuna has a review average and a photograph of a swimming pool.
Delhi B&B Scheme Gaps Need To Be Filled
The Delhi B&B scheme under which Flourish Stay was licensed deserves examination as a regulatory instrument, because its design contains the gap through which the June 3 disaster walked. The scheme was introduced to formalise Delhi’s informal hospitality economy, to bring paying guest accommodations and small guesthouses within a regulatory framework that would, in theory, ensure basic safety compliance in exchange for the legitimacy of a government licence.The licence permits a specific number of rooms. The licence fee is paid on that number. The property is then effectively free to operate as many rooms as its walls and its contempt for enforcement will allow, because the inspection mechanism that should translate the licence’s room limit into a physical constraint does not function with the frequency or rigour the licence implies.
Flourish Stay operated around 25 rooms on a 6 room licence for long enough to become a listed property on a global travel platform with a review history suggesting ongoing guest satisfaction. The Fire NOC that would have required a physical safety inspection of those 25 rooms was never obtained. No inspection triggered by the absence of that NOC was ever conducted. The property remained on the platform and the commission kept flowing but 21 people died!
Overregulation Yet Underenforcement
The argument invariably produced at this point, that overzealous regulation will damage tourism, that India’s hospitality sector cannot absorb the compliance costs of rigorous safety enforcement, that the informal economy is the only viable model for the small operator who cannot afford the legal and administrative infrastructure of full compliance, deserves to be stated and then dismissed with precision.Overregulation did not kill 21 people in Malviya Nagar. Under-enforcement of the regulation that already existed did. The licence existed, so did the room limit, the Fire NOC requirement, and the National Building Code’s emergency exit provisions. Yet, none of them were enforced.
The argument against tighter regulation, in this context, is an argument that the existing regulation’s non-enforcement should be extended rather than corrected. That is not a tourism policy position but a statement of institutional failure dressed as economic pragmatism.
The Reform Necessary To Save Lives
The specific reform this disaster makes necessary is not complex in design, though it is demanding in implementation. Every B&B, homestay, guesthouse, and paid accommodation registered under any state tourism scheme and listed on any commercial booking platform must be subject to an annual physical compliance inspection conducted by a joint team from the relevant state tourism department and the local fire authority. The findings must be uploaded to a publicly accessible database within 30 days of the inspection and linked directly to the property’s listing on every platform through which it accepts bookings.The inspection must verify:
* Room count against the licence,
* Fire NOC,
* Emergency exit availability and accessibility,
* Smoke alarm and fire extinguisher installation, and
* Structural compliance with the applicable building code’s occupancy provisions
A property that fails the inspection must be unlisted from all booking platforms within 48 hours of the failure finding, with relisting contingent on verified remediation. The platform that continues to list a property after a failure notice has been served must bear joint civil liability for any harm to guests that results from the continued listing.
The platforms will resist this and their resistance will be framed as a defence of the small operator, of economic inclusion, of digital access to the tourism economy for properties that cannot afford compliance. This framing should be treated with the same scepticism appropriate for any argument in which the party resisting accountability presents itself as the defender of the party it is actually exploiting.
Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and their domestic equivalents are not small operators. They are global technology companies whose combined market capitalisation runs into hundreds of billions of dollars. The cost of building a compliance verification API that checks a property’s current regulatory status against a government database before displaying it as bookable is not a burden that threatens their business model. It is a feature they have chosen not to build in markets where the regulatory pressure to build it does not exist.
India’s tourism authorities have the leverage to create that pressure. They have statutory authority, under existing tourism trade registration legislation in most states, to require that platform listed properties carry a valid, current registration number, and to require platforms operating in India to verify that registration number against a live government database before processing a booking.
This is not a novel regulatory concept. The European Union’s Digital Services Act, which came into full effect in February 2024, requires large platforms to implement risk based content moderation and compliance verification systems precisely because the EU determined that self regulation by commercially interested platforms was structurally inadequate to protect consumers.
India does not yet have an equivalent legislative instrument applied to the hospitality booking sector, and the absence of that instrument is the gap that the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, and every state tourism department with a registration scheme must now urgently fill.
The Medical Tourist Who Followed The System’s Logic
The medical tourist from Nigeria who booked Flourish Stay was not a careless consumer. He was a person in a foreign country, seeking accommodation near a hospital where he would receive treatment, using the tool that every travel system in the world now operates through, applying the verification logic that the platform’s interface encourages: Check the star rating, read the reviews, look at the photographs, confirm the distance from the hospital.None of those steps would have revealed that the building had no Fire NOC. None of them would have shown that 25 rooms were being operated on a 6 room licence. None of them would have indicated that the single entrance that served as the building’s only exit was also the point through which the fire would cut off escape.
The platform knew none of this because it had not checked. The government knew none of this because it had not inspected. The licence existed, the commission was collected, and the booking confirmed.
At least 21 people died in a building that the system had certified as legitimate and the market had certified as acceptable. Both certifications were wrong, and both the system and the market knew the mechanisms through which they could have been right and chose not to use them.
The Cycle That Will Repeat Unless Broken
The inquiry that the Delhi Police have announced, the arrests that may follow, and the city-wide fire safety audit that the tragedy has prompted will produce - with the consistency of a pattern that India has rehearsed many times - a set of findings, a set of recommendations, a circular to all B&B licence holders, and a renewed commitment to enforcement that will last approximately as long as the news cycle sustains public attention.The Arpit Palace fire produced the same cycle in 2019. Its lessons were not institutionalised. Flourish Stay burned seven years later with the same violations, in the same city, under the same regulatory framework, through the same enforcement gap.
The only honest response to this pattern is the one that does not fit in a news cycle, which is a permanent, technology enabled, platform integrated, publicly accessible compliance verification system that makes the regulatory status of every listed accommodation visible to every prospective guest before the booking is confirmed and enforceable against every platform that profits from listings made in its absence.
At least 21 people, most of whom had come to India for medical care, deserve, at least, the acknowledgement that their deaths were not an accident of fate. They were an outcome of choices: A licence holder’s choice to operate beyond his licence, a fire authority’s choice not to enforce its NOC requirement, a platform’s choice not to verify the property’s compliance before listing it, and a regulatory system’s choice to treat tourism promotion as a priority that accommodation safety enforcement should not be allowed to complicate.
Those choices have names attached to them. The inquiry should find the names and the law should hold them.
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