FOUR OF EAST DELHI FAMILY KILLED IN FIRE

New Delhi: A pre-dawn blaze on Friday killed four members of a family, including a girl who celebrated her 12th birthday barely hours ago, at a four-storey building in east Delhi’s Dilshad Colony, police said.

The other dead are the girl’s brother, their father and grandfather. The children’s mother was admitted to a hospital with 40 burns. The woman’s third child, an eight-year-old girl, and her sister escaped unhurt from the blaze that is suspected to have been sparked by a faulty electrical connection on the ground floor of the building. The family’s flat is on the second floor. Firefighters said they lost at least half an hour in reaching the accident site due to cars parked haphazardly along the road leading to the building, highlighting a serious safety concern in Delhi’s residential colonies with narrow lanes and bylanes. “When we couldn’t trace some of the car owners, fire fighters used their hands to remove some of the vehicles,” said Atul Garg, chief fire officer of Delhi Fire Services.

Three other residents of the building were also injured while escaping, police added.

This was the third fire incident in the neighbourhood in the last 10 days, but the first to cause human casualties.

Police said the victims were also slow to react after being alerted about the fire as they had gone to sleep late in the night after the girl’s birthday celebrations.

The four are suspected to have died of asphyxiation. The victims were identified as Vijay Kumar Verma (63), Sanjay Verma (45), Harshu (12) and Chiku (4).