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7 killed as fire breaks out in shanties in north-east Delhi
New Delhi Seven people from two families, including three children, were burnt to death when a fire broke out in a slum in northeast Delhi’s Gokalpuri in the early hours of Saturday
New Delhi
Seven people from two families, including three children, were burnt to death when a fire broke out in a slum in northeast Delhi’s Gokalpuri in the early hours of Saturday. Two others suffered burn injuries.
At least 32 shanties were gutted, leaving over 150 residents homeless. More than two dozen bicycles were burnt as well. Several cooking gas cylinders, utensils, air coolers, clothes, sewing machines, television sets and other household items were destroyed in the fire.
It took 15 fire engines and about 40 firefighters nearly six hours to douse the flames and recover the seven charred bodies from two dwellings, a fire department official said. The exact cause of the fire was not immediately known.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences to the bereaved families on Twitter. “The fire incident in Delhi’s Gokulpuri is heart-wrenching. I express my deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in this accident. May God give them the strength to bear this immense sorrow,” Modi tweeted in Hindi.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Manoj Tiwari, Bharatiya Janata Party parliamentarian from northeast Delhi, visited the spot and met the affected families.
The Delhi government will pay compensation of ₹10 lakh each for all adults and ₹5 lakh each for the three children who died in the fire, Kejriwal announced. Families who have lost their homes will be given ₹25,000 each as compensation, the chief minister said.
“The incident of fire in Gokalpuri is very sad. Reached the spot and met the victims. Many people lost their homes and loved ones in this accident,” Kejriwal said on Twitter.
Of the seven dead, five belonged to one family, while two children, siblings aged 13 and nine, were from another family. The two injured people were a couple from the family of the five dead. Residents in the area said the shanties were owned by a private entity, and they paid a monthly rent.
The people who died tried to rescue each other before getting trapped and burnt, a fire official said, asking not to be named.
Around 1am on Saturday, the Gokalpuri police station received a call regarding a fire in some shanties and sent a patrolling team to the area along with the district’s reserved personnel, additional deputy commissioner of police (northeast) Devesh Kumar Mahla said.
“We also contacted the fire department that responded swiftly. The fire in the jhuggis was doused by 4am with the help of firefighters,” Mahala said. “Seven charred bodies were recovered and sent to Guru Teg Bahadur hospital’s mortuary, where autopsies were conducted before the bodies were handed over to the families. Two people were injured and were admitted to the hospital.”
The authorities have arranged for food and shelter for the families affected by the fire.
The deceased were identified as Bablu, 32, his 12-year-old son Shanshah, and two siblings, Ranjeet, 22 and Reshma,18, and sister-in-law, Priyanka, 21. The other two dead children were identified as Roshan,13, and his sister, Deepika, 9. Bablu’s parents, Rajjan and Munni Devi, both in their 50s, suffered burns while trying to rescue their kin who were trapped in the shanty, the police said.
Almost all residents of the affected shanties hail from villages near Kanpur and Unnao districts in Uttar Pradesh. They were living in the rented shanties for nearly three decades and earned their livelihood by repairing zips of trousers and bags, and selling lemons and green chillies to shopkeepers in east Delhi.
Santo, 58-year-old grandfather of the two dead siblings, said he was sleeping in his shanty with his son, Pintu, daughter-in-law, Roma, and four grandchildren, Roshan, Muskan, Rashmi and Deepika, when the fire broke out and engulfed all the 30 plus shanties.
“There was chaos everywhere as I rushed out of my jhuggi followed by Pintu and Roma, who were with Rashmi and Muskan. My two grandchildren (Deepika and Roshan) were trapped inside and the blaze was such that we could not go inside the jhuggi and rescue them. Everyone was running for their lives. We also rushed out, else we would have died,” said Santo.
Santo and other families living in the burnt shanties alleged that firefighters and police arrived late at the spot and started firefighting only after the blaze had gutted their homes. They also blamed residents of the adjacent buildings for not helping them in dousing the flames and acting like spectators.
“All of us were screaming for help and requesting people standing on the terrace of the nearby building to use water pipes and douse the fire. But none of them paid heed to our requests,” said Bablu’s sister Ravina, who lives with her husband, Pradeep, in a nearby shanty that was gutted.
Police and fire department officials denied the allegations of delay. The police team reached within two minutes after receiving the distress call while fire tenders reached in 10 minutes, an official said.
Saturday’s deaths were the second such tragic incident in northeast Delhi since October 26 last year, when four members of a family were killed after a blaze broke out at their third-floor house in Old Seemapuri.
As many as 184 people lost their lives in fires between January 1, 2019, and January 18, 2022, according to data provided by the Delhi Fire Services. Of them, 43 people, including a fireman, were killed between January 2021 and January 18, 2022, the data showed.
