As Fire Spread, Delhi Woman Stayed Behind With Elderly Mother. Both Died

Fire couldn't defeat her. She stayed with her mother till the end. Rescuers later found their bodies next to each other. Himanshi, 22, decided to stay put in a burning room to be with her 70-year-old mother, Lado Kashyap. Her powerful act of love for her mother came at the final moments of her family in Delhi's Palam, where a four-storey building they were living in caught fire on Wednesday morning.

Nine members of the same family died in the fire that engulfed the building on a narrow lane, close to Palam metro station.

More details about the family's attempt to escape from the fast-spreading fire have emerged.

Lado and her daughter lived on the second floor, their relatives said. The mother could not reach the upper floor in order to escape from the fire that spread from the floors below. Seeing her, Himanshi chose to stay behind with her, they said.

As the fire spread, the two women ran into a bathroom. But the fire's intensity, fuelled by burning cosmetics and plastic material, was such that it engulfed the bathroom in no time, the relatives said.

Himanshi stayed by her mother's side and tried to drag her out to safety until her very last moments, while her other family members had already reached the upper flood to shout for help.

The 22-year-old's body was identified by the ring she wore. Neighbours said Lado rarely came out of the house. Her husband, Rajendra, was away in Goa on the day of the tragedy.

The dead include the couple's sons Pravesh, 33, and Kamal, 39; Kamal's wife Ashu, 35, and their three daughters aged 15, six and three. The couple's other daughter-in-law, Deepika, 28, also died in the fire.

Anil and Sachin, the two other sons of Lado and Rajendra, jumped from the building. They are being treated in a hospital.

The incident has raised questions over the fire department's hydraulic ladder system.

Eyewitnesses said the ladder of the hydraulic crane, which first reached the spot, failed to deploy, while a second crane took nearly an hour to arrive. They said had the first hydraulic crane worked, the lives could have been saved.

Mukesh Verma, a friend of Rajendra and the general secretary of the local market association, said he and his friends tried to reach the upper floors by breaking through the ground-level shutter.

But the smoke and flames were so intense that it delayed help from reaching the family trapped on the upper floor.

A firefighter, requesting anonymity, said the first ladder turned out to be too short for the rescue. By that time many of the family members on the upper floor disappeared behind thick smoke.

Both the Aam Aadmi Party and the ruling BJP have criticised each other over the incident.