Delhi: 9 dead in massive fire at cloth godown in Kirari

Nine people were killed in a fire including three children at a cloth godown in the Kirari area of New Delhi days after 43 people lost their lives to a fire at Anaj Mandi

Nine persons, including a six-month old child, were charred to death when a three-storey residential-cum-commercial building caught fire in Outer Delhi's Kirari early Monday morning.

The fire broke out in a building that houses a cloth godown on the ground floor on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday. Eight fire tenders were rushed to the spot by the fire brigade which received a call at 12.30 am.

Rescue workers said the fire was brought under control by 3.50 am. A gas cylinder exploded on the second floor which caused partial collapse of the building.

Preliminary investigations suggested that the cause behind the fire was a short-circuit which led to the cylinder blast.

Those killed in the incident are the building's owner Ram Chandra Jha (65), Sudariya Devi (58), Sanju Jha (36), Guddan and Uday Chaudhary (33) and his wife Muskan (26), their children Anjali (10), Adarsh (7) and six-month-old Tulsi, the fire services official said.

Three people -- Pooja (24) and her daughters Saumya (10) and three-year-old Aaradhya -- escaped as they jumped to an adjacent building.

This is the second major fire incident in the capital, the first one being a blaze in a building housing illegal manufacturing units in north Delhi's Anaj Mandi which killed 43 people on December 8.

On February 12 this year, 17 people, including a child who along with a woman jumped from the window, were killed when a fire broke out in a Delhi budget hotel in Karol Bagh area.

Jha had rented out the ground floor to Vijay Singh Katara, who claimed that all the clothes stored there have been destroyed.