‘BUILDING OWNER ESCAPED WITH FAMILY FROM TOP FLOOR AMID FIRE’

NEW DELHI: A day after 27 people were killed and 17 injured in a fire in an illegal commercial building in Mundka, Delhi Police on Saturday said they are still questioning the two men, who had taken three floors of the building on rent to operate their business, to establish the sequence of events that led to the devastating fire.

Police arrested the two men -Harish Goyal and his brother Varun Goyal -- on Friday and are on the lookout for the owner of the building, Manish Lakra, who allegedly managed to escape the fire with his family from the top-floor flat by climbing onto the roof of an adjacent building.

According to police, the Goyal brothers are also being questioned on the lack of fire safety arrangements in the place. Their father, Amarnath Goyal, is also feared dead in the fire, police said. Police said they would seek reports regarding violations pertaining to the building and the businesses running there from the fire department, civic body, trade department and other concerned departments.

“We have learnt that the two brothers had taken the first floor of the building on rent in 2018 to run their company’s office. Between 2019 and 2021, they took two more upper floors,” said additional commissioner of police (western range) Chinmoy Biswal.

Local residents told police that Lakra along with his mother, wife and two children climbed down from the terrace to the roof of an adjacent building using a rope.

According to the FIR, seen by HT, 100 employees worked at the company of which 50 were women.

However, employees who survived said over 200 persons were employed at the firm.

Fire station officer of Kirti Nagar, Ashok Kumar Sharma, who was leading the firefighting operation on Friday night, said, “Some charred bodies were lying near the lift’s access point on the second floor, suggesting that people may have tried to use it to get out of the building.”