New Delhi, Mar 5 (PTI) A fortnight before Eid, when many families in a shanty cluster in northwest Delhi’s Rithala had begun buying new clothes and making small preparations for the festival, a devastating fire early Thursday reduced their homes and belongings to ashes, leaving dozens of migrant families homeless and a teenage girl dead.
Seventeen-year-old Rozina Khatun had stepped out when the fire broke out. However, she rushed back inside her hut moments later to retrieve a new set of clothes she bought for Eid, never to return.
“She had gone out when the fire broke out and then went back inside to get her new clothes,” Rozina’s aunt Jerina Bibi said.
“As she ran inside, she told us that she would return quickly with the new clothes,” Jerina added.
A local said he tried to save the girl but failed as the fire spread rapidly.
“I tried to go inside and save her, but others stopped me. When the authorities finally took her body out, it was charred,” he said.
Locals said the blaze spread within minutes, leaving little time for people to react as flames raced through the tightly packed huts made of wood, plastic sheets, and cloth.
“Someone shouted that a fire had broken out, and within minutes it grew so big that everything was destroyed,” a middle-aged woman, who lived in the cluster for three decades, said.
People shouted, “Sab jal gaya” (all our belongings are gutted), she added, pointing to the spot where her hut once stood.
“We have been living here for 30 years, but this is the first time that something like this has happened,” she added.
Visuals from the site showed a trail of devastation – rows of shanties reduced to charred frames, and scraps of wood and twisted metal lying amid piles of ash.
Even the small trees lining the area had been scorched, their branches gone, with only thin blackened stems standing like skeletal remains.
Many residents claimed that around 200-250 ‘jhuggis’ (shanties) were destroyed, alleging that the fire might have been deliberately triggered amid an ongoing dispute over the land, though the authorities have not confirmed the claim.
For Abdul, a scrap dealer, years of savings vanished overnight.
“Only the pens that you see are left. Everything else is gone – the fridge, TV, everything,” he said.
“An SDM had come with food, but we don’t know for how long help will come,” a resident said.
According to officials, the Delhi Fire Services received a call about the blaze at around 4.15 am, after which more than 18 fire tenders were rushed to the spot.
The fire, which also spread to an adjacent godown containing paper rolls and cardboard, was brought under control by 6.30 am.
Police have registered a case and said the exact cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained. PTI MSK BM ARI ARI
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