JOIN USFour people, including 13-year-old boy, died of suffocation and one suffered burn injuries after a major fire engulfed a shoe factory at outer Delhi’s Mangolpuri on Tuesday morning, police said.
The victim has been identified as Chandrashekhar, 20, Kuldeep, 22, Salman, 13 and Rajkumar, 25, and Mithilesh, 18, has suffered burn injuries and is undergoing treatment at Safdarjung Hospital.
The doctors said the victims died due to suffocation but there had also burn injuries.
The fire engulfed a shoe manufacturing factory which was being run illegally on the ground floor of a three-storey building at 4 am.
“We received a call at around 4 am and we rushed to the spot and informed the fire department,” said a police officer adding that fire tender vehicles rushed to the spot and doused the flames in an hour.
The victims were taken out and rushed to nearby hospital where four of them were declared dead and one injured. The injured Mithilesh was then referred to Safdarjung hospital, said the officer.
Short circuit
During preliminary investigation, police found that the fire erupted due to short circuit. When the fire took place, the door was locked there lot of Rexine material at the entrance due to which they could not get out of the factory.
The police said that the victims were employed at the factory and were on a night shift. They worked till 1 am before and then went to sleep.
Before going to sleep Kuldeep locked the exit gate in the front portion of the building.
During investigation, police found that the owner of the building Jai Narayan rented the ground floor of the building to Rajpal, factory owner, around seven months ago.
“We have registered a case and still investigating into the matter,” said the officer.