Mourning replaced the festive atmosphere at a wedding in Jasola Vihar when a blaze caused by a leaking LPG cylinder left three women and two children of a family dead .
The wedding of the family’s eldest son, Mohammad Islam, had to be cancelled. The procession returned from Bijnor after receiving the news of the accident that claimed, among others, the groom’s mother Munnissira (40).
Neighbours said there were nearly three dozen persons, mainly women and children, in the two-bedroom house on the first floor .
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“A woman noticed that the pipe of one of the two LPG cylinders it the house was damaged. While trying to fix the problem, she disconnected the pipe leading to leakage and a fire broke out,” said a neighbour Salim.
A police officer said they were probing what caused the fire. “We will have to verify whether the blaze was on despite the interruption in supply or the spark was electrical in nature,” he said.
As the room caught fire, the occupants fled to different parts of the five-storey house . Neighbours attempted to douse the flames with water-filled buckets, sand and water stream using motors.
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The fire service department and the police were informed.
It so happened that a fire tender was deployed to douse the flames of a truck that had been set afire by an angry crowd following an accident at nearby Church Road.
The tender was relieved moments before the call of the Jasola accident was received and was diverted to attend to it. But , the tender took a while to reach the house because of the narrow alleys it had to negotiate its way through. Back in the house, some ran upstairs while others went down. Five of them, however, trapped inside were burnt alive, said the police.
Among those dead, besides Munnissira, were Islam’s relatives Bhoori Khatoon (60) and Mohsina (30) as well as two children - four-year-old boy Iram and three-year-old girl Sarah. Neigbours said that Iram had been adopted by Islam’s uncle and aunt.
The officer said the location of the kitchen near the entrance became a roadblock for the victims trying to escape. He added that as the ceiling fan in the room was on, the gas rapidly spread to all parts of the house. Islam and his father Idrish run a tobacco shop in the area.