Two of family killed in fire in Mumbai high-rise

Two members of a family, including a child, were charred to death in a fire that gutted an apartment in a residential high-rise in suburban Andheri on Tuesday night, officials said Wednesday.

The blaze started around 8.20 pm in the apartment located on 10th floor of the 21-storey building when the family was performing a puja, an official of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) disaster management cell said.

The flames later spread to some portion of 11th floor of the building located on Veera Desai Road, he said.

As the fire engulfed the flat on the 10th floor, two of its occupants tried to take shelter near the iron grille of a window in their drawing room, but got charred to death, an official at the Oshiwara police station said.

The deceased were identified as Sagar Sharma (7) and Vicky Sharma (25), he said.

Three other family members were later rescued from the bedroom. One of them received 25 per cent burn injuries and was admitted to a nearby hospital, he said.

Five fire engines and four jumbo water tankers were pressed into service and the flames were doused after about two hours, the BMC official said.

The bodies were later retrieved and sent for postmortem, he said, adding that the exact cause of the fire would be ascertained after an inquiry into the incident.