Boy dies of burn wounds, toll of Monday’s fires is eight

A 16-year-old boy, who suffered severe burn injuries in one of the two major fire incidents here on Monday, succumbed to his wounds, taking the combined death toll to eight, the police said on Wednesday.

Nikhil Sharma, a Class 10 student, was returning home from a gym in southeast Delhi’s Sunlight Colony when a fire, followed by a gas cylinder explosion, broke out in a building.

Sharma, along with 16 others, was admitted to Safdarjung Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries on Tuesday. Hours before he passed away, a 38-year-old woman, identified as Mithlesh, who was seriously injured in the same fire incident, succumbed to her wounds.

Meanwhile, CCTV footage of the incident surfaced on Wednesday in which people can be seen passing by and gathering near the building in which the fire broke out. People can be seen running for cover and away from flames after the explosion.

In the video, two men can be spotted with their shirts on fire and around four persons running with flames on their head after the explosion.

The clip was extracted from CCTV footage obtained from a shop in the locality near Ashram Chowk.

The fire at Sunlight Colony, suspected to have been caused by a short circuit, broke out on the first floor of a building. The flames spread to other floors following a cooking gas cylinder blast.

Mamta (30) and her daughters Kritika (9) and Priyanka (11 months) died on the spot. They were stuck in their third floor flat in the building. In their attempt to jump to another floor, they fell on the flames and were charred to death.

In another incident triggered by a gas cylinder explosion, in east Delhi’s Gandhi Nagar area, three persons died and eleven injured the same evening.