Owner of building where 45 died in blaze nabbed after 1 year on run

Mohd Imran, who was held on Saturday, is brother of another arrested suspect Mohd Rehan, and carried a reward of Rs 50,000 on his arrest. Together, they owned one of the two buildings that caught fire on December 8 last year, BK Singh, additional commissioner of police (crime branch) said.

One of the joint owners of the building in north Delhi’s Anaj Mandi that caught fire last December and left 45 persons dead was caught nearly a year after being on the run, police said on Monday.

Police said Imran owned the fourth and fifth floors of one of the buildings that went up in flames. (Sanchit Khanna/HT file photo)

Mohd Imran, who was held on Saturday, is brother of another arrested suspect Mohd Rehan, and carried a reward of Rs 50,000 on his arrest. Together, they owned one of the two buildings that caught fire on December 8 last year, BK Singh, additional commissioner of police (crime branch) said.

Two other suspects have already been arrested by the police, which had registered a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and attempt to commit culpable homicide in the case.

Singh said Imran had gone into hiding on the day the fire broke out. “He had been hiding at the homes of his relatives in places such as Meerut, Agra, Raipur, Ajmer and Seelampur,” the officer said.

Imran was caught on Saturday after the police were tipped off that he would visit Delhi to attend a family function. “We caught him in Azadpur,” Singh said.

Police said Imran owned the fourth and fifth floors of one of the buildings that went up in flames. “He himself ran a small plastic products manufacturing unit from the ground floor of the same building and had rented out his floors to other small businesses,” said the officer.

Singh said the two brothers had bought the two-storey building in 2007 and had gone on to construct three more floors.

“The congested quarters inside the building had exacerbated the effect of the fire,” said Singh.