20241027 Four cousins burn to death in Gurgaon house fire
India Oct 27 2024 “Houses”
Dead : dead 1 to 4 Burnout : 1 to 29 Injured : injured 0 or unknown
Four cousins burn to death in Gurgaon house fire
Updated: 2024-10-27
Gurgaon: A fire that broke out around Friday midnight killed four cousins sleeping in a room in Saraswati Enclave.
The blaze, believed to have been sparked by a short circuit around 12.15am, blocked the exit path and filled the room with smoke. The four choked on the smoke and fell unconscious, and were charred to death by the time neighbours broke open the door and brought them out.
Mohammad Mushtaq (28), Noor Alam (27), Sahil (22) and Aman (17) were from the same family in Bihar’s Motihari. While Mushtaq and Noor worked as tailors and stayed in a rented accommodation, Class X student Aman lived with his family in another room. Sahil had come to Gurgaon 15 days ago to visit his relatives.
Aman’s father, Mohammad Mafees, told TOI all of them had dinner together and went to sleep in their rooms around 11pm.
The four cousins slept in one room, while Mafees and his wife went to another on the same floor.
“I was jolted out of sleep by shouts of help and frantic thumping on the door. We shouted out to our neighbours, who rushed in to help. They brought water from the tank in buckets and doused the flames before they could spread to other parts of the building. They broke open the door, but all four were charred to death by then,” said Mafees, who fainted seeing his son’s body.
His son Aman was a Class X student and was preparing for the boards next year.
Residents accused police and the fire department of responding late.
“By the time the fire tenders arrived after an hour, we had doused the flames ourselves. We fought the blaze with water from our tanks, Had the fire fighters arrived in time, the four may have been rescued. Police arrived even later,” a local resident said.
Sukhbir Singh Yadav — the RWA president — said the fire department was informed within minutes of the blaze.
“The fire station is merely 500m away. Despite that, the fire tenders arrived around an hour later. Cops also arrived around the same time although the nearest police station is just a kilometre away. Councillor Brahm Yadav visited the house and assured of a thorough investigation. The affected family will receive full support. Concrete steps will be taken to prevent such incidents in the future,” he added.
Fire department officials denied the allegation that they arrived late, saying every detail was in the records.
“Our register has everything — when we received information and the time taken to reach the spot. Our teams reached the area within 10 minutes of receiving an alert,” said Gulshan Kalra, deputy director of the fire department.
On Saturday afternoon, a team arrived to collect forensic evidence from the room where the fire broke out, but was faced with protests by residents.
It was only after the team managed to persuade the residents that collecting forensic evidence was crucial to ascertain the cause of the fire that they allowed them to carry out the work.
Till late on Saturday evening, no police complaint was registered.
Web Source The Times of India