There was no ventilation, the basement main door was locked, and there were 28 rooms instead of the permitted six at Flourish Stays B&B in South Delhi’s Malviya Nagar, where 21 people died in a fire Wednesday morning, the First Information Report (FIR) registered on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder states.
The South District police registered the FIR at Malviya Nagar police station based on a complaint by a police officer.
According to the police, the complainant first mentioned details of a police control room (PCR) call about a fire, in which the caller said some people were trapped inside the premises. “After receiving the call, the local station house officer, other police personnel, and senior officers of the South District reached the spot. Some police personnel immediately started the rescue operation. They also informed the fire department, and personnel from both departments rescued the guests trapped inside the hotel,” a senior officer at Police headquarters said, quoting from the FIR.
The FIR states that after the incident, the police inspected the premises and found no proper fire safety arrangements. “There was no space for ventilation in the hotel premises, and the entrance door of the basement was also found locked. Firemen managed to enter after cutting the door,” it notes.
The police also stated in the FIR that the establishment had 28 rooms. This is more than the permitted number of six, sources said, adding that at least 18-19 rooms were reportedly occupied at the time of the incident.
A senior officer from the forensic department said that an initial examination of the hotel premises on Thursday revealed around three or four fire extinguishers in the hotel, but all of them were intact. “After examination, it has been revealed that all the documents of the deceased and the victims are intact, and most of the victims, prima facie, died due to suffocation. One of them had burn injuries,” the officer said.
The B&B is located in a narrow lane in Hauz Rani, diagonally across from Max Hospital in Saket.
