Two persons died in a fire that broke out in the kitchen of a restaurant situated at Malcha Marg in Chanakyapuri area. The incident took place at ‘lazeez Affaire’ restaurant in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Two people who died in the incident were reportedly the employees of the restaurant.
They have been identified as Rakesh (20) and Ravindra (35). The bodies were extracted by the rescue team of the Delhi Fire Service and sent to a hospital for post-mortem. Chanakyapuri police have registered a case of negligence causing death and are investigating. The autopsy was performed on the body of Rakesh while the post-mortem on Ravindra’s body could not be done. It will be done on Friday, a police official said.
The cause of fire was apparently the short circuit and the fire soon engulfed the entire kitchen area and the two workers who were sleeping on the floor were trapped in the inferno. They were charred to death by the time fire engines could reach the spot and bring the fire under control.
DCP, New Delhi district, SBS Tyagi said that there were five employees who were sleeping inside. Three of them identified as Rajesh, Jitender and Manish managed to escape to safety while the two unfortunate souls were trapped and could not get out of the area and perished.
A police official said that the incident took place in the wee hours on Thursday morning when five workers were sleeping in the kitchen area of the restaurant. The three other workers managed to escape while Rakesh and Ravindra got trapped inside and died of suffocation. The fire was caused due to a short circuit in the fridge that was kept inside the kitchen. Rakesh and Ravindra belonged to Uttarakhand. The fire station received a call at around 3.40 am. The fire was brought under control within half an hour and two fire engines were used. “We are investigating the cause of fire. Further investigations are in progress” said DCP New Delhi SBS Tyagi.