80-yr-old dies days after hotel blaze kills his kin
The devastating Malviya Nagar hotel fire that wiped out eight members of a Gurugram-based family last week claimed its ninth victim on Tuesday with the death of 80-year-old Radhe Shyam Aggarwal, the family patriarch whose illness had brought his relatives to Delhi and inadvertently placed them in the path of tragedy.
Aggarwal, who had been undergoing treatment for a lung-related ailment at Max Hospital in Saket, died days after the June 4 blaze at the Flourish Inn bed-and-breakfast hotel. With his death, the entire Aggarwal family has been wiped out, leaving no immediate survivors.
Family members who perished in the fire were identified as Vivek Aggarwal, his wife Tarjani, their daughters Jeevisha and Waria, Vivek’s mother Premlata, his uncle Ashok Goyal, aunt Kamala Goyal and another relative, Jhimri Aggarwal.
According to relatives, the family had checked into the hotel only a day or two before the fire to avoid the daily commute between Gurugram and Delhi while attending to Radhe Shyam Aggarwal’s medical needs.
“They had taken two rooms in the last one or two days to beat the Gurugram-Delhi distance,” a relative had told The Pioneer.
Sources told The Pioneer that the family was allegedly in the hotel’s basement area when the fire broke out and rapidly engulfed the building, trapping occupants amid dense smoke.
In a particularly poignant detail, Jeevisha, a student in Bengaluru, had been called to Delhi just a day before the tragedy so she could meet her ailing grandfather.
Sources said Radhe Shyam Aggarwal remained admitted to the Saket hospital after the fire and was largely unaware of the catastrophe that had unfolded barely a few hundred metres away, NDTV reported. He reportedly kept asking about the absence of his family members, not knowing they had all died in the blaze.
The scale of the tragedy became evident during a visit to the Hauz Rani neighbourhood a day after the fire, where Vivek Aggarwal’s white Audi remained parked outside the charred hotel. Looking at the vehicle, a resident remarked sorrowfully, “Who will drive this now? Jiski thi vo toh chalagaya.”
The fire, one of Delhi’s deadliest hotel blazes in recent years, has sparked questions over fire safety compliance and emergency preparedness in commercial establishments across the Capital.
Authorities are continuing their investigation into the circumstances that led to the tragedy. So far, the fire has claimed 22 lives, including foreign nationals.
