If not for fireman Rajesh Shukla, at least 11 labourers would have lost their lives on Sunday to the devastating fire in a handbag manufacturing unit in Delhi that claimed 43 lives.
Shukla, a fireman with the Delhi Fire Force, was the first to enter the building in north Delhi's during the rescue operations and managed to get 11 people out of the smoke-filled four-storeyed building before injuring his own legs.
His heroic efforts became public when Delhi Minister Satyendar Jain visited him at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital where he was admitted with injuries.
Posting a photo of his meeting with Shukla, the Minister tweeted, "Fireman Rajesh Shukla is a real hero. He was the first fireman to entered the fire spot and he saved around 11 lives. He did his job till the end despite of his bone injuries. Salute to this brave hero."
The scenes at three hospitals, where the dead and injured were brought, are heart-wrenching as people scrambled to locate their relatives who were inside the building at the time of the incident. Some of them had visited more than one hospital as they could not find their relatives in the first one they visited.
A brother of a victim said that he received a call from a friend of his sibling informing about the incident but he had no clue in which hospital he was.
Most of the victims were fast asleep and they could not find a way out as smoke filled the whole building.
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