NEW DELHI: The charred body of a 19-year-old teenager was recovered on Thursday morning from the second floor of a shop in east Delhi’s Gandhi Market where a major fire broke out a day ago, police said.
“A charred body was found on the second floor of a building at Gandhinagar garments market,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara) R Sathiyasundaram said.
The fire broke out on Wednesday evening and the fire department received a call about it around 5.20 pm at Jai Ambe Shop, Nehru Gali, Gandhi Nagar. Around 35 fire tenders and 150 firefighters controlled the blaze, the officials said.
The fire-fighters faced difficulty in dousing the fire as there was no water available nearby and the fire tenders were parked far away from the spot due to the narrow alleys of the market, said Delhi Fire Service chief Atul Garg.
It took nearly 10 hours for the firefighters to put out the fire. A man, identified as Aftab (32), who has been working at the ill-fated shop from the past 12 years said that on Wednesday he closed the shop around 5.15 pm and started walking towards the main road along with 4 other workers.
“When I was just half a kilometre away from the shop, we saw smoke emanating from the building and I immediately informed the owner,” Aftab said. Suddenly, Aftab realised that his brother Shehnawaj (19) was trapped inside. “We tried to break the locks and asked my brother to go upstairs but by the time we did it, fire had already spread in the whole building and we were not able to find my brother,” he said.
Shehnawaj’s charred remains were found the next day around 8.30 am. Meanwhile, the locals blamed the extremely narrow lanes due to which the firefighting operation was stalled for a while. “It was the poor market infrastructure that took Shehnawaj’s life,” said a local. The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, however, traders claimed that they rendered losses to the tune of Crores.
The Delhi Fire Service had put this fire incident in medium category and deployed over 150 firefighters during the overnight operation. Crime team and forensic team will inspect scene of incident once the heat generated is down, police said, adding short circuit is suspected to be the reason behind the fire K K Balli, president of the Association of Wholesale Readymade Garment Dealers (Gandhi Nagar), claimed that two of the shops in the market were completely gutted by the fire and the traders rendered huge financial losses running into crores of rupees. Balli said it appears the fire was triggered by a short circuit in a shop and spread to nearby buildings.