Five employees of e-commerce company IndiaMART were killed in a fire that broke out in a three-storey commercial building in Ghaziabad’s Kavinagar on Saturday morning.
Five employees of e-commerce company IndiaMART were killed in a fire that broke out in a three-storey commercial building in Ghaziabad’s Kavinagar on Saturday morning. The blaze also left 10 persons, including three rescuers, injured.
Those who escaped death were either rescued by some of their colleagues or they jumped off the burning building.
The fire was reported in Sector 14 of Raj Nagar in Ghaziabad around 9.30 am. A short-circuit in the air conditioner is suspected to have led to the fire; the police said they still need to probe the exact trigger.
Locals alleged the fire tenders arrived at least an hour after the fire broke out. “Ghaziabad is right next to the national capital and this area is not congested either. Under these conditions, the delay by fire tenders was ridiculous,” said Jitendra, a man who works in an office opposite the burning building.
The e-commerce firm’s employees were still walking in for the day’s duty when the fire broke out, allegedly in a property dealer’s office on the first floor. There were around a dozen employees in the IndiaMART office at the time of the blaze. Since the fire started on the floor below them, the exit route for them was blocked.
The door, which was the nearest exit, was locked when the fire broke out, forcing employees to jump to the roof of the adjacent building. “The fire spread so rapidly that we did not have time to even think. Since there was no exit route, our colleagues chose to jump out from the second floor,” said Jazib Siddiqui, an executive who suffered burns on his hands.
He said he carried two of his unconscious colleagues on his shoulders to rescue them. Finally, like most others who survived, Mr Siddiqui broke open the window panes and jumped off the building to escape a possibly tragic end.
The four employees, all in their 20s, who died due to suffocation have been identified as Hemant Pratap Singh, Ritam Dwivedi, Puneet Mishra and Chandrapraksh Tyagi. The fifth victim, Peeyush Goel (28), died after sustaining a head injury while attempting to jump from the second floor. The police said that the deaths appear to be caused by asphyxiation even though they would await the autopsy report.
