A couple in their 40, their teenaged daughter and a pet dog died; son managed to escape through balcony, legs fractured. A couple, their teenage daughter and their pet dog died due to asphyxiation when they were trying to reach the terrace after a fire broke out in the four-storey building in Faridabad’s Green Field colony early Monday morning.
Police said the couple’s 24-year-old son, Aryan Kapoor, was the only one in the family to survive and reach the terrace. The deceased have been identified as Sachin Kapoor, 50, his wife Rinku Kapoor, 48, and daughter Sujan Kapoor, 13. Fire department officials said the Kapoor family lived on the second floor of the building and the fire started around 3am, possibly in the air conditioner, on the first floor, where another family, the Maliks, lived.
Faridabad police public relations officer Yashpal Yadav said that Sachin, his wife and their daughter were found lying unresponsive along with their pet dog on the stairs between the third and the fourth floor of the building.Yadav said that the Kapoor family probably tried to escape to the terrace but failed as the terrace door was locked. “They later fell unconscious on the staircase which was already filled with smoke. The son, however, managed to break the glass window just beside the terrace door by kicking it and jumped on the terrace of an adjacent house with the help of neighbours and thus managed to survive,” the officer said.
The firefighters pulled them out and rushed them to a private hospital about 1.5kms away from the spot. The couple and the daughter were later declared dead. Investigators said that poisoning smoke inhalation seems to be the prime reason for their death as there were no burn marks on their bodies. Aryan is now undergoing treatment with cuts, bruises and fractures. Police said the bodies of the deceased were handed over to their relatives after an autopsy.
Investigators said that Sachin had also taken the third floor of the building on rent, from where he ran his stock market investment office. Two other families lived on the first and fourth floor of the building. Firefighters rescued seven members of the family living on the fourth floor by cutting open the iron gate on the terrace which was locked.
Inspector Prehlad Singh, station house officer of the Suraj Kund police station, said that preliminary investigations indicate that the trio might have panicked and lost their balance in the poorly lit staircase, which was already filled with black smoke.
“They fell and could not get up and suffocated to death. The son, meanwhile, was able to get up to the terrace door and sneak out by breaking the window glass. It took upto 45 minutes for rescue workers to reach the location, where the trio were found. It had probably become too late by then,” he said.
Fire department officials said that the flames engulfed the entire flat on the first floor due to which the entire building had got filled with dense poisonous smoke.
“A couple and their two children were asleep in two of the rooms of the flat in which smoke was building up after the fire. Ritu Malik, the woman, was first to get up. The entire family rushed out from the ground floor while alerting the other families living upstairs,” a fire department official said.
Officials said that the Malik family had got the AC repaired hardly a month ago that exploded on Monday. Besides, the building owner Rakesh Yadav was scheduled to change the damaged wiring of the flat on the first floor soon, before which the accident took place.
An inquiry was being carried out by the fire department officials to ascertain if the fire was caused solely due to AC malfunctioning or from damaged wiring causing overheating.
