LUCKNOW: In a mishap, a couple and their four-month-old daughter suffocated to death while being asleep and getting trapped inside their first-floor flat when a fire broke out in the ground-floor godown of the tents in Ghaziabad on late Sunday night.
As per the official sources, of the 13 persons trapped in the inferno, three died during the incident.
The official sources said that while the ground floor of the building is used by owner Sunil Dutt, two flats are there on the first floor and one on the second floor.
The fire broke out at the ground floor and engulfed the flats on the upper floors as well.
As per the Ghaziabad chief fire officer, Sunil Kumar Singh, none of the occupants of the flats on the first and the second floor could come down as the stairs to both the floors were from inside the godown.
The firemen rescued 10 of the 13 people trapped in the fire by calling them on the roof of the top floor from where they were taken to an adjacent house.
However, the couple and their daughter were on the first floor and they tried hard to break the door but fire and smoke was raging from the stairs.
So, they could not move out and died due to asphyxiation, said the chief fire officer. The victims were identified as Pankaj Kumar (30), his wife Kavita and their minor daughter, Kritika.