Mundka fire: Delhi police arrests building owner where 27 died

The owner of a building in outer Delhi's Mundka where a massive fire led to the death of 27 people was arrested on Sunday, two days after the incident, police said here.

"We received information that Manish Lakra was going towards Haridwar in Uttarakhand. We laid a trap and nabbed him from Ghevra Mod," Sameer Sharma, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer), said.

Lakra used to live on the fourth floor of the commercial building, and he managed to escape to the adjacent building along with his family members when the fire broke out, the police said.

The police have recovered 27 bodies and identified 14 of them as women and six as men so far, they said.

A motivational programme underway on the second floor of the building when the fire broke out. A father-son duo from Australia were conducting the session, the police said.

Lakra was on the run since the fire incident, the DCP said, adding that raids were conducted in Delhi and Haryana to nab him.

According to the police, the building belonged to Lakra's father, who died in 2015, leaving it to him.

The CCTV camera and router manufacturing and assembling company, in whose office the fire is suspected to have started, had been on the premises since 2017. Its owners have already been arrested.

Nineteen people are still unaccounted for.