Sourav, a fellow resident, recalled Pankaj rushing out of the building that was ablaze. “Suddenly, Pankaj said that his family members were still stuck. We tried to stop him but he ran upstairs. Later, we got to know that he died upstairs,” he told The Print.
Pankaj, his grandmother and sister were killed in the blaze, while his other sister and mother are undergoing treatment for critical injuries. The family used to stay on the third floor of the building.
Neighbours scurried up adjoining buildings, broke open a locked terrace gate, used sarees and ladders to help trapped residents escape. They also poured water down the staircase to battle the flames.
Firefighters rescued eight people, including two women, and rushed them to Safdarjung Hospital and AIIMS Trauma Centre, Delhi Fire Service (DFS) PRO Rajindar Atwal said.
An FIR has been registered at the Govindpuri police station against unidentified persons under Sections 106(1) (causing death by negligence) and 287 (negligent conduct with respect to fire or combustible matter) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
How fire spread
The fire, according to officials, began in the ground-floor parking area.
DFS Assistant Divisional Officer (ADO) Yashwant Singh Meena said that three scooties, two motorcycles and one bicycle parked there caught fire, with smoke spreading upwards. “The ground, first and second floors are completely burned and the rest partially burned.”
South-East Delhi District Magistrate Sravan Bagaria said that there were likely 30 to 40 people inside the building at the time of the fire.
The smoke caused more damage than the flames, the local residents said. “It was the smoke. The smoke from the fire below reached the top floors,” Sourav recalled.
A resident living on the rear side of the first floor told ThePrint that he woke up to find black smoke outside his door. “At 2 am, we woke up to commotion and saw smoke. The moment we opened the door, there was black smoke everywhere. We were breathless.”
Neighbours turned rescuers
Local resident and block president Renu Bhutani was among the first responders after hearing cries for help.
“I was watching ‘Crime Patrol’ on television when I heard people screaming, ‘Bachao, Bachao (Save us)’. I thought it must have been a thief, but when we went outside we saw thick smoke coming out of the building,” Bhutani said.
“We dampened our clothes before I and my son went inside. We then dumped several buckets of water in an effort to put out the fire. Our neighbours joined in soon.”
The dense smoke arising from the smouldering vehicles stopped everyone from using the staircase, he said. “We went to the road behind the building, but there was no entrance from the backside.”
From a neighbouring two-storey building, residents reach the terrace of the fire-hit building with the help of two wooden ladders tied together. DFS personnel, Meena said, entered through the terrace after cutting open the locked gate and rescued two girls.
Built around two years ago, the building had 10 flats spread over five floors. There was only one entry and exit point. “There was only a single entrance to the building. Builders just make flats and sell them. If there were fire extinguishers, we would have put off the fire right there and then,” Bhutani said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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