Nine people were killed and three others injured after a fire at a three-storey building in outer Delhi’s Kirari. The Delhi Fire Services said that they received a call about the blaze at 12:30 am on Monday and immediately rushed seven fire tenders to the spot.
The police said the fire started from the ground floor, and suspect the cause of fire to be a short-circuit.
They also say that an LPG cylinder kept on the staircase of the building exploded and that could be the reason for the spread of fire and so many deaths.
The Kirari incident comes days after the Anaj Mandi blaze in which 43 people were killed.
The Anaj Mandi fire on December 8 was the most severe fire incident in the national capital after the Uphaar Cinema tragedy that claimed 59 lives and left over 100 injured in June, 1997.
The Uphaar theatre in the posh Green Park area was screening Bollywood film “Border” and several families were there to catch the movie featuring Sunny Deol on its release day – June 13, 1997 – but the 3 pm show turned into mayhem after a massive blaze broke out.
Fourteen years after the Uphaar tragedy, a fire broke out at a meeting organised for transgenders at Nand Nagri, where almost 10,000 people had gathered, leaving 14 dead and nearly 30 injured.
In January 2018, an illegal factory in Bawana caught fire, and all 17 people on the premises were killed because the only door they could have used to escape was locked from outside on the owner’s instructions.
And this February 12, a fire at a hotel in central Delhi’s Karol Bagh – caused by a suspected short-circuit in a hotel that was a tinder box due to rampant fire-safety violations – claimed 17 lives.
Across these three incidents, a total of 52 people were killed.
In the same year, two separate fires in northwest Delhi’s Kohat Enclave and Shahdara’s Mansarovar Park claimed five lives, including that of three minors.
In August, six persons, including three children, died and 13 were injured in a massive fire at a building in southeast Delhi’s Zakir Nagar area due to a short circuit early in the morning.
In November, a massive fire gutted a footwear factory at Narela, killing a security guard and a labourer. The body of the security guard was found after the fire was brought under control, but the charred body of the second victim was recovered four days after the blaze.
In July 2017, tragedy struck a four-storey building in the Dilshad Garden area, where four members of a family, including two children, died due to asphyxiation and two others were injured while trying to escape the early morning blaze.
The family had celebrated the birthday of its 12-year-old daughter a day before the tragedy.
The girl was killed while she was trying to escape the fire with her father, grandfather and younger brother.
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