india

Updated: Jun 08, 2019 23:29 IST

A 28-year-old woman and her two children were killed in a fire that broke out in a three-storey building that also housed a playschool in Faridabad’s Dabua colony on Saturday morning, the police said. The playschool, which operated from the first floor of the building and was gutted, was closed for summer vacations.

On Saturday evening, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar directed state officials to form a three-member committee to investigate the incident. However, the police have begun a probe under Section 174 of the CrPc, but are yet to register an FIR.

A statement issued by the Faridabad Police said that the playschool was run by Neeta, the woman killed in the blaze.

Neeta’s husband, Vishal, managed a garments store on the ground floor of the same building, while the couple lived on the second floor with their children, Yashika, 8, and Lucky, 5.

Videos run by news channels showed people using a ladder to rescue Neeta and her children through the window on the second floor of the building, but they died of asphyxiation.

The incident comes just a fortnight after a fire in a coaching centre in Surat in Gujarat left 22 persons, mostly students, dead, even as many of them were captured on camera footage jumping down in an attempt to save themselves.

SS Saini, an assistant divisional fire officer of Haryana Fire Services, said that the terrace of the building had been locked to prevent playschool students from sneaking to the top. “Since the terrace was locked and the staircase of the building was engulfed in smoke, the woman and her children had no escape route,” said Saini.

While Faridabad’s deputy commissioner, Ashok Kumar Garg, said that it was yet to be probed if the playschool followed fire safety norms, DK Nanda, also an assistant divisional fire officer, said that the playschool did not have a no-objection certificate from the fire department.

“There was just one entry and exit point for the playschool. Had the school been open during the blaze, students would have been trapped inside,” said Nanda.

Constructed over a plot 200 square metres in size, the building was located in a congested marketplace in Dabua colony, about 15 kilometres from the Delhi-Faridabad border.

According to the police, the fire was noticed by Vishal around 7.30am on Saturday when he walked downstairs to buy milk. “Vishal ran back upstairs to wake his sleeping wife and asked her to bring the children down. He then returned to the ground floor to control the blaze,” said the police statement.

The fire department received a call around the same time and sent three fire tenders. But local residents had already begun their rescue operations by then.

On realising that the three occupants of the building couldn’t escape through the staircase, locals arranged a ladder and reached the second floor of the building. They broke open the glass panes of a window and brought out the trio even as the fire fighters quickly doused the flames, show videos.

They were rushed to a nearby hospital where they were declared dead on arrival.

“We have not registered a first information report (FIR) since the dead persons are the building owner’s family members,” said a senior police officer.

The police are yet to ascertain the trigger, but local residents said that a water motor that is switched on every morning could have malfunctioned, starting the fire.