New Delhi: Shards of glass on the floor, backpacks piled in a corner and a restless crowd — these were scenes witnessed at Sanskriti Coaching Centre in New Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar area on Thursday afternoon after the building caught fire.
Over a 100 students were present in the coaching institute when the incident took place, engulfing nearly all the classrooms in smoke. According to the police, some students were hurt while trying to escape the building and were rushed to the Babu Jagjivan Memorial Hospital.
Raman Rana, student at an adjacent coaching institute, told ThePrint, “One of our teachers informed us of the fire and asked us to evacuate our building immediately. We saw many students from the Sanskriti Coaching Centre trying to climb down the four-storey building using wires.”
Some of the eyewitnesses ThePrint spoke to, who didn’t want to be named, said the fire began in an electricity meter box located at the entrance of the building.
“The entrance to the Sanskriti Coaching Centre was so narrow that only one person could pass at a time. If two people went side by side they touched the meter box. There are 400-500 students in the building. And the narrow entrance made it impossible for such a huge number of students to escape without touching the meter box,” Rana added.
The institute, near Batra Cinema, lies in a locality that is a hub of UPSC coaching centres and frequented by hundreds of students every day.
DCP North West Jitendra Kumar Meena told the media that the fire was detected around 11.30 am and the rescue operation ended around 3.30 pm. Around three ambulances were seen parked at the entrance of the lane where the institute was located and 11 fire tenders pressed into service. While the rescue operation ended around 3.30 pm, the police confirmed that investigation into the incident was ongoing.
‘Students escaped using wires’
The eyewitnesses also said some of the students received injuries when they hit the air conditioning units while climbing down from the third and fourth floors of the burning building.
Dev Sarman, a teacher from a coaching centre nearby, told ThePrint, “This is Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s fault…how can they allow a building that houses hundreds of students to only have one narrow entrance and that too where the meter box is located.”
Residents living nearby were the first to help the students escape the building. In videos circulating online, locals were seen gathered around the building to help the students.
Terming it a “very unfortunate” incident, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the inferno was brought “under control” by the fire department.
आग की ये घटना बेहद दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण है। कुछ छात्र बचने के प्रयास में मामूली रूप से घायल हुए हैं, बाक़ी सभी छात्र सुरक्षित हैं। घबराने की बात नहीं है, दमकल विभाग द्वारा आग पर क़ाबू पा लिया गया है। ज़िला प्रशासन भी मौक़े पर मौजूद है। https://t.co/h32QYbxuKB
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) June 15, 2023
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