A QUICK-THINKING husband used his wife’s sari as a makeshift rope to save her and their two children from a fire started deliberately in the post office below, a court heard.

Sinappu Vigineswaran unravelled wife Kamalakumay’s dress to lower her to the ground.

She then raised the alarm. He did the same for his sobbing children, daughter Jathurshika, 13, and eight-year-old son Kaijan, before jumping to safety himself.

Staff from a nearby Chinese restaurant tried to put out the fire with water.

The blaze engulfed the post office and shop in Church Street, Tovil, Maidstone, causing £50,000 worth of damage and closing it for two months.

Daniel Hoggart, 18, was sentenced to three years' youth custody after being convicted of arson being reckless as to whether life was endangered.

Maidstone Crown Court heard that the post office was run by Mr Vigineswaran and the adjoining shop by Kanagasundaram Prince.

Valeria Swift, prosecuting, said Hoggart set fire to a piece of plastic protruding from an open window with a lighter as he walked past on November 6 last year.

The youth’s two brothers had been sacked as paperboys by Mr Prince, but it had not been proved as a motive, said Miss Swift.

“Mr Vigineswaran and Mr Prince were put out of business for a couple of months while the insurance claim was resolved,” she said.

Miss Swift said the next day the whole village was talking about the fire. “It was the talk of the town,” she said.

Hoggart sympathised with Mr Prince about it. He later told a friend: “I would not have done it if I had known people were living there.” Friends informed the police.

Hoggart told officers that after starting the fire, he did not give it another thought.

He maintained that he did not know anybody lived in the premises.

He admitted that he “liked playing with fire”, but said he had only ever lit bonfires in his garden. Christopher Gillespie, defending, said Hoggart was a normal young man who committed the offence out of “catastrophic stupidity”.

Hoggart had decent exam results at school, passing several GCSEs. He was from a supportive and stable family. He did not have any particular problems, such as with drugs or alcohol.

“It is a crime of stupidity rather than malice, but one which could have had dreadful consequences,” he said.

“He never expected the fire to take hold in the way it did. Although the risk was appalling, no one was injured.”

Mr Gillespie said it was not “a career destroying act”. The property was insured and now back in business.

Judge Philip Statman told Hoggart: “The consequences could have been even more devastating than they actually were. That was no thanks to you or your conduct.”

The judge added that if Hoggart had been an adult, he would have faced a sentence of around five years.