In second such incident within a fortnight, a family of three, including a six-year-old boy, died of asphyxiation in their South Delhi house after a gas room heater was left on.
According to police, a 35-year-old software engineer Satish lived in the two-room flat with his wife and son at South Delhi’s Kotla Mubarakpur area. The incident came to light on Thursday when a neighbour made the PCR call around 8:20 am. “When our team reached the house and broke open the door, the trio was found lying on the bed inside quilt in an unconscious state. The heater was found switched on and all the doors and windows of the house were shut. They were rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors pronounced them dead on arrival,” said a senior police official. The deceased have been identified as Satish Verma (30), his wife Shashi Verma (28) and son Archit.
While Satish was a software engineer with a private firm in Noida, his wife was a housewife. The boy was a class I student at a private school in Defence Colony area. The family hailed from Samastipur in Bihar and had been living in the area since the last three years. Police suspect that the family died due to inhaling excessive carbon monoxide produced by the heater they had left switched on before sleeping last night. “Although the exact cause of their death will be known after autopsy it seems that they died due to asphyxiation. We are investigating the case,” said a senior police official. Shashi’s mother, who lived nearby told police that Satish had informed that on Wednesday night her daughter was ill.
When they reached their house in the morning to check, they got no response from inside and the phone calls also remained unanswered following which they informed police. On December 21, three men who worked at the house of a businessman died of asphyxiation after they had lit a coal fire (angithi) in South Delhi’s Hauz Khas area.