In the early hours of Sunday, Zahid and his friends — who were roaming the narrow lanes around Charminar — were suddenly alerted by a woman who informed them of a nearby fire in a building where a family with children was trapped.
Zahid, who runs a bangles business in nearby Gulzar House, quickly rushed to the spot with his friends to come to the family’s aid.
Instead, what they found upon breaking into the fire-engulfed house was a string of dead bodies — the lifeless body of a woman clinging to the charred bodies of children.
“As the main door of the building was engulfed in flames, we broke the shutter and also a wall and went inside. As the blaze was high we went to the first floor. We found seven people in one room and six others in another room. We were not able to save them due to the fire. Had we saved them it would have been good,” he told news agency PTI.
At around 6 am, a fire broke out in the Krishna Pearls shop and quickly spread to the building above, killing 17 members of the same family — including eight children — who had been living there for over a century.
According to officials, the victims — ranging from 2 to 73 years old — died of asphyxiation and burn injuries in the fire, which was caused by a short circuit. “Now only two members of the family are left,” AIMIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi told reporters, calling the incident “very painful.”
The officials further said that the narrow entrance and staircase connecting the first and second floors proved fatal towards the end as the residents had no other alternate escape routes.
Telangana Disaster Response and Fire Services Director General Y. Nagi Reddy said the tunnel-like entrance to the building was only two meters wide, and the staircase connecting the two floors was just one meter wide, making it impossible for residents to escape.
As the fire, which started on the ground floor, quickly spread to the upper floors, the residents were left with no escape route, as there were no windows or doors facing the only accessible road for the fire department’s hydraulic firefighting platform.
Inputs from PTI