Mundka fire: Owner of the building arrested, role of agencies under lens

Deputy commissioner of police (outer) Sameer Sharma said Lakra was on his way to Haridwar when he was arrested from Ghevra Mor on Delhi-Rohtak Road on Sunday morning.

The police on Sunday arrested Manish Lakra, the owner of the Mundka building where a devastating fire killed 27 people on Friday, police said.

The charred shell of the building in Mundka. (Raj K Raj/HT)

Lakra, who was present in the four-storey building with his family when the incident took place, managed to escape, police said.

Deputy commissioner of police (outer) Sameer Sharma said Lakra was on his way to Haridwar when he was arrested from Ghevra Mor on Delhi-Rohtak Road on Sunday morning. “Police teams were conducting raids to nab Lakra. He was arrested based on a tip-off that the Lakra was escaping the city,” Sharma said.

An investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Lakra lived on the terrace of the building with his wife, two children and mother. They managed to escape by cutting a plastic sheet that separated the building with the adjacent one. People trapped on the floor below could not reach the terrace since the lone staircase in the building was on fire.

Also, the door to the terrace was locked from inside, the officer said adding that it was usually locked too since Lakra lived there.

“As soon as he (Lakra) realised that fire broke out, he and his family cut the plastic sheet and jumped to the next building,” the officer said. Police have seized the footage from a nearby CCTV camera to analyse the sequence of events.

DCP Sharma said Lakra was arrested alone, and that the location of his family members was not known. “He said he called his relatives when the fire broke out, and then shifted locations in Delhi and Haryana to evade arrest. He said he also slept at a temple,” the DCP said.

The DCP also said that role of everyone, including the civic agencies, will be probed to fix responsibility.“We will write to the civic agencies including the concerned municipal corporation and Delhi State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIIDC) to explain relevant details. Their roles will be examined. A thorough investigation will be conducted and responsibility will be fixed,” Sharma said.

The police investigation so far has shown that Lakra did not get the mandatory police verification of his tenants -- Harish Goyal and his brother, Varun Goyal -- who were running a CCTV assembling unit in building. The Goel brothers have already been arrested.

The Goels who were present when the unit caught fire managed to escape the building on a crane that was roped in by locals to help rescue the people trapped inside the building. A second investigator, however, said that their father, 80, who was present in the building, could not step on to the crane, and have probably died.

The fire started at 4:40pm on Friday on the first floor. It quickly spread to the second floor where all 70 employees of the CCTV firm were present to attend a motivational lecture. Majority of the 27 dead, only eight of whom have been recognised so far, were women who worked at the unit.

Police have registered a case under charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, attempt to commit culpable homicide, concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment, and common intention under the Indian Penal Code’s sections 304, 308, 120 and 34.