Kirari fire: Close shave for woman, daughter and her niece

Had 24-year-old Pooja not rushed to the top floor and shouted for help when a blaze ripped through her house in Kirari on Monday, she along with her three-year-old daughter and niece would not have survived the fire in which four of her family died.

Nine people, including three children were killed in the massive blaze that ripped through the three-storey residential-cum-commercial building in outer Delhi's Kirari area in the early hours on Monday.

"I was sleeping when I saw smoke coming in my room. At that time, I went to the terrace and shouted for help. Thankfully, my neighbours heard my cries and they got a wooden ladder to rescue me and my daughter (aged three) and Saumya (her niece, aged 10)," Pooja, who was still struggling to come to terms with the incident, said.

Saumya sustained 15 per cent burn injuries, she said.

Pooja's husband Amarnath Jha was not in Delhi when the fire ripped through the house and had left for Haridwar to take a dip in river Ganga.

"I had lost my elder brother Vaidyanath in January this year and now another tragedy has happened with my family," she said.

As soon as Pooja saw smoke and reached the terrace, she called her husband who could not hear her properly. After learning that a fire had broken out at his house, he rushed to Delhi to be with his family.

The cause behind the fire is being investigated. It is suspected that the fire started due to a short-circuit which led to a cylinder blast and the subsequent collapse of a wall of the building.

Those killed were identified as Ram Chandra Jha (65), the building's owner, 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.