Boy, 2, charred to death, many hurt in slum blaze
A two-year-old boy was charred to death when around 125 hutments in a slum cluster caught fire in Tughlaqabad Extension area of southeast Delhi on Friday afternoon.
The police said a two-year-old child was charred to death in the fire which started at around 1.30 am. “Ten fire tenders were rushed to the spot and it took them around one and a half hour to douse the flames,” a senior fire official said.
The reason for the blaze was not immediately clear but it appears that one of the clusters had caught fire due to gas leakage, said officials.
“The fire had spread to other clusters. The child, Prasanjit, was sleeping in his house when the fire engulfed the cluster. The boy could not be rescued in time. After the rescue operation was over, he was rushed to Safdarjung Hospital where he succumbed to injuries. Many other people suffered minor burns,” a senior police official said.
The preliminary investigations have revealed that the fire started when some women were cooking food in a cluster and spread to surrounding clusters. A case has been registered and investigations are on,” said the official.
Almost all the clusters, which are on top of a hill in Tughlaqabad were gutted. Most residents of the clusters are migrant labourers who have come from Bangladesh, Bihar and West Bengal.
Meanwhile, in another fire, one person was injured when a grease manufacturing unit caught fire on Friday morning.
The police control room got the information about the fire from A block, Nangloi in outer Delhi at around 11 am.
According to the officials, the factory workers had lit a fire inside the factory premises to keep themselves warm which caused the blaze.
“One of the workers, identified as Nand Lal, was rushed to the hospital with burn injuries,” said a fire official.
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