DMRC official, wife, daughter die in house fire; probe on

A Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) employee, his wife and their nine-year-old daughter were charred to death early on Tuesday in a fire at a DMRC-allotted flat at Metro Apartments Mukundpur, north-west Delhi, a police officer said.

The deceased were identified as Ajay Vimal, 44, an Assistant Section Engineer at Barakhamba metro station, Neelam Vimal, 43, a housewife and their daughter Jahnavi.

According to police, a fire call was received at Adarsh Nagar police station at 2.39 a.m., and six fire tenders were rushed, bringing the fire under control by 3.20 a.m.

A Delhi Fire Services official said the firefighters found the family members on a charred bed. The bodies were sent to Babu Jagjivan Ram Memorial (BJRM) Hospital for post-mortem. During the rescue operation, a firefighter, Rakesh, was also injured and shifted to the same hospital.

The police officer said the initial investigation suggests a heater in the bedroom may have caused the fire. The officer also said, asphyxiation may have been the principalcause of death, since there were no signs of struggle on the bed. “The bedroom and the drawing room of the 1-BHK flat were destroyed in the fire,” said the officer.

Ajay, a native of Uttar Pradesh, started working with the DMRC in 2006 and moved to the Mukundpur flat in 2016.

“The fire first came to notice when the neighbours heard a glass cracking sound around 2.30 a.m.,” said a DMRC spokesperson.

“Smoke was billowing out of Ajay’s 1-BHK flat on the fifth floor, and the neighbours alerted the security personnel, who tried to control the fire with an in-house fire tender,” the spokesperson said.

The housing complex has 350 flats, and this was the first fire incident reported there.

Ajay had lost his father last year, and his mother had passed away earlier. Jahnavi was a Class 4 student at Queen Mary’s School, Model Town. The police said the probe is under way to ascertain the exact cause of the fire.