Gurugram/New Delhi, Jun 3 (PTI): A silent grief hung in the air as the residence of chartered accountant Vivek Agarwal in Gurugram lay deserted on Wednesday after almost the entire extended family was wiped out in the deadly blaze that ripped through a hotel in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar area, claiming 21 lives. Shocked neighbours gathered outside the empty house in Sector 46, unable to come to terms with the fact eight members of the family, including Vivek (48), his wife Tarjini (47), mother Prem Lata, and daughters Jivisa and Variya, perished in the fire on Wednesday morning.
Only a tenant was present on the first floor of the house, who refused to talk to the media.
“Vivek was a CA working with a private company while his wife ran an NGO. We have been told that the bodies will arrive tomorrow after post-mortem. We are all shocked,” Yogender Singh, a neighbour, said.
“None of us can believe that the entire family got killed in the fire. Vivek was a good-natured man, and the family was on friendly terms with everyone in the neighbourhood,” Dhull, another neighbour, said.
Puneet Gupta, a relative of Vivek, said he made a call to him in the middle of the fire and said “brother, maybe we won’t survive”.
“I told him to wet a handkerchief and cover his face with it but even that was of no help. Now he is gone,” he said, adding, “By the time we reached there, they were all dead.” Ashok and Kamla Goel, Vivek’s maternal uncle and aunt from Rajasthan’s Kishangarh, and another relative, Jhumri Lal Goel, were among the family members who died, relatives said.
According to them, Vivek had booked two rooms in the Flourish Stay B&B in Malviya Nagar, where the fire broke out, as his father Radhe Shyam Agarwal had been undergoing treatment at the Max Hospital nearby for the past many days.
A relative said that Vivek’s daughter Jivisa, the youngest among the victims, had returned from Bangalore a day earlier to visit her grandfather at the hospital.
With the death of eight family members, the only survivor in the immediate family now is Vivek’s ailing father, Radhe Shyam.
Prem Bansal, Vivek’s father-in-law who lives in Mahavir Enclave in Delhi, said that Vivek’s mother, wife, two daughters, maternal uncle, aunt and another uncle were present at the time of the incident.
They sustained severe burn injuries and lost their lives, he said.
Vivek’s relatives questioned the hotel’s safety measures, saying that although the site was located on the main road, access to it was through a narrow, congested lane, and that the place lacked proper fire-safety infrastructure.
“The lane is extremely narrow, and there was no proper fire escape arrangement. We still don’t know what caused the fire,” Gupta said.
Another relative said they rushed to the Max Hospital after receiving a call from a cousin, adding that they had never imagined something like this could happen.
“We were unable to recognise them just by looking at their pictures. Everyone was severely burnt,” the relative said.
The fire ripped through the Flourish Stay B&B allegedly operating without a fire NOC in a congested bylane, killing at least 21 people, including 12 foreigners whose relatives were being treated in hospitals nearby.
The blaze started around 8.30 am and quickly spread through the five-floor narrow building that had only one entry-exit point, permanently sealed windows and a sensor-operated main door, officials said.
At least 58 people were rescued and rushed to hospitals where 21 were declared dead, they said. PTI COR VBH MSJ ARI
(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)
