In a tragic incident, three persons, including two women, died after they were caught in a massive fire which broke out at a hardware factory in national Capital's Jhilmil Industrial area on Saturday morning. Police said that it is suspected that they died due to asphyxiation as there were no major burn injuries found on their bodies.
The deceased have been identified as Manju, Sangeeta and Shoaib. Police said that Manju and Sangeeta had been working in the factory for the last three years while Shoaib had joined it last year.
"The factory opens at around 9 AM in the morning. Around 60 workers were present inside the building when the incident occurred on Saturday morning. Most of the workers came out of the building but Manju, Sangeeta and Shoaib who were present on the second floor, could not get passage to come downstairs as it was filled with smoke," said Pradeep (28), the supervisor of the factory.
According to Atul Garg, Chief Fire Officer, Delhi Fire Services (DFS), the fire broke out at a rubber-plastic factory in Shahdara's Jhilmil Industrial Area around 9 AM.
"A call was received regarding the blaze at 9: 25 AM following which 31 fire tenders were rushed to the spot. The fire was brought under control by 5:30 PM and efforts are being made to ascertain if more people were trapped in the building," said Garg adding that the exact reason of fire is yet to be ascertained.
Meanwhile, Meghna Yadav, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Shahdara district said that two women and a man were killed in the blaze.
According to police, the factory was of hardware manufacturing and they used to make taps. "The fire ignited from the first floor of the building and engulfed the whole building within no time."
"The workers in factory manufacture and pack taps. There were cart boards present on the ground and second floor due to which the fire spread swiftly," said a factory worker.
"The second floor of the factory was the packing section. After packing the material, they used to be placed on ground floor and some in the basement area for loading," said the worker.
"We came here in the morning at around 9.30 AM for work and saw a dense smoke coming out of a factory. Three people were taken out of the building by the fire department in front of us and rushed to the hospital. We have no idea about their condition but they were looking very serious," said Pramod Kumar (49), a worker from a factory in Jhilmil Industrial area.
Ranen Kumar, Deputy Commissioner, Factory License Department of East Delhi Municipal Corporation said that detailed investigation of this incident will be done.
Kumar said that the license of that factory had already expired and it was not renewed. He said that the factory was operating in the area of 110 square meters and Fire No Objection Certificate (NOC) not required for the area below 250 square meters as per norms.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal expressed shock over the incident and visited the site, along with the industries minister Satyender Jain. Speaker of the Delhi Assembly Ramniwas Goel, who is also the local MLA, also visited the site to see for himself the extent of damage caused by the fire incident that took away their precious lives.
"Shocked to know about three deaths in a factory fire in Jhilmil Industrial area. Fire Services personnel tried their best to bring the fire under control in hostile conditions. Am visiting the site wid Industries Minister (sic)," Delhi Chief Minister tweeted.
Expressing his grief over the incident of fire in a rubber factory in Jhilmil area of Delhi, BJP Delhi President Manoj Tiwari said that I am shocked by this incident. Such incidents of fire are taking place one after another in Delhi. After such incidents, people talk about the security measures to be taken but Delhi Government does not take preventive steps. The death of three persons in the incident of fire is very shocking and foolproof measures should be taken to prevent such incidents in future.
In January last year, 17 people — 10 women and seven men — were killed in a massive blaze at a firecracker storage unit in outer Delhi's Bawana Industrial Area.
