John was a fire inspector who investigated a minor fire at Sharma & Sharma factory in April 2016. John told Rishi Sharma that the bin had been the cause of the fire and a match must have been dropped in it. Rishi insisted that was impossible and but his son Jai discovered that the CCTV had been turned off during the incident, so PC Swirling concluded that it was an arson fire. Unknown to everyone, teenage employee Belle Dingle had met married man Jermaine Bailey in the factory and accidentally knocked over candle, which caused the fire.