An explosion following leakage of liquefied petroleum gas inside the house of a building watchman, left him, his wife and their two children with critical burns at Nallakunta on Friday.
The watchman Ganeshwar Rao, 45, and his wife Laxmi, 36, have sustained third degree burns and are battling for their lives in Gandhi Hospital.
Their daughters, Jyothi, 15, a tenth standard student, who is to take the last annual exam on Saturday and Padmavathi, 13, ninth standard student, too sustained critical burns.
They were shifted to Suraksha Children Hospital at Tarnaka after initial treatment at Gandhi Hospital. Rao works as watchman at Deccan Heights apartment building in Vidyanagar.
He lives with family on the building premises in an asbestos-sheet roofed single-room house.
“He wanted to wake up his elder daughter appearing for SSC annual exams and switched on the light at 4.30 a.m.
Apparently, the gas had leaked from the cylinder by then and filled the entire room,” the Nallakunta Inspector V. Jayapal Reddy said.
The explosion that followed blew up the room’s roof and flames resulted in serious burns to the entire family.