Kin of Delhi fire victims recall last words, survivors recant incident

NEW DELHIAt 7

NEW DELHI

The illegal factory site. (Sanjeev Verma/HT Photo)

At 7.40pm on Tuesday, 62-year-old Dilip Singh called his son Dharam from work and told him that he won’t survive, according to his son. “There’s a big fire. It’s all around. I don’t think I’ll survive,” Dharam quoted his father as saying, calling it “his last words”, made in a 43-second call. Two minutes later, when Dharam called his father, there was no response.

Dharam rushed between the fire site, the mortuary of Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital and the police station for clarity; then he saw a charred body and identified his father.

“After that last call from my father, I called a man who used to work with him to rush to the site because it would have taken me time to reach from Noida. His colleague reached and said that the fire had spread to all floors and he could not enter the building,” Dharam said, while standing outside the Budh Vihar police station on Wednesday.

Dharam said that while his brother, mother and he moved to Uttam Nagar four years ago from Rithala, his father stayed on and managed by himself for work. He used to transport material to suppliers on an e-rickshaw he bought six months ago.

“The police are not telling us anything. I have seen the bodies kept in the mortuary. I have identified my father but they are saying that they’ll conduct a DNA test first,” said Dharam.

Just like Dharam, 21-year-old Anjali Pandey, her sister 23-year-old Chinki Pandey and their 10-year-old brother have been looking for their mother Neelam Devi, 50, at the fire site since 8pm on Tuesday. “Her colleagues said that she got stuck while trying to climb down the stairs from the first floor. We don’t know if she is dead,” said Anjali, in between sobs.

She said that her mother used to earn ₹8,000 a month, which she said was “much less than minimum wages” for 10-hour workdays from 10am to 8pm. “She used to say they used to work without fans all day even in peak summer,” she said.

The family said that the factory was highly unsafe for workers because there was massive use of chemical and plastic. “They all did it for money which wasn’t even enough to survive,” Anjali said.

Survivors, meanwhile, shared how they jumped off the building and fled to the terrace to save themselves.

Thirty-five-year-old Geeta Devi, a resident of Budh Vihar, who has been working at the first-floor factory for the past seven years, said that a colleague came running to inform them about the fire “which started from the owner’s office”, after which she ran to the gallery and jumped. “There was a staircase but I jumped onto an e-rickshaw parked right outside,” she said.

Another survivor, Sanju Kumari, 30, said that she fled to the terrace and jumped to the adjacent building to save herself. “I fainted because of the smoke after that and was taken to a hospital. I am fine,” she said.

Survivors said among 11 at the first-floor factory, Neelam Devi and one Lalita Devi—suspected to be the third victim—were stuck. Her family was not at the spot. Officials aware of the matter said the fourth person reported missing was 69-year-old Rakesh Arora, who was renting the top two floors.