80-year-old dies after late night fire at first floor flat, wife hospitalised

Ghaziabad: An 80-year-old man allegedly died of suffocation after a fire broke out at his first floor flat in a two-storey building in Brij Vihar on late Friday night

Ghaziabad: An 80-year-old man allegedly died of suffocation after a fire broke out at his first floor flat in a two-storey building in Brij Vihar on late Friday night. Police said that his 75-year-old wife was rushed to a hospital where she is under treatment.

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According to police and fire department officials, Raghunath Shah and his wife Sapna were sleeping when a fire initiated at their flat in D-block of the area and the neighbours alerted the fire department and police around 1:15am on Saturday.

“We received a call at 1:18am and rushed a fire tender from nearby Vaishali fire station. The couple was taken out from the flat and rushed to the hospital. The fire, which probably started due to some short circuit in the house, was doused soon after our personnel reached there,” said Sunil Kumar Singh, chief fire officer.

The neighbours living at the second floor of the building raised an alarm after they spotted thick fumes emanating from the couple’s flat. “The couple did not sustain any burn injury. The elderly man died soon after the incident probably due to inhaling fumes. They lived alone in the flat and were not keeping well. In the morning, their relatives also arrived from Delhi,” said Ajay Tyagi, one of the neighbours.

The police said that the man probably died of suffocation after inhaling toxic fumes. “His wife is still at the hospital in Vaishali. The 80-year-old man died in the flat. It seems they (the couple) could not move out due to old age,” said Gyanendra Kumar Singh, superintendent of police (city 2).