‘He was sleeping at the time… no one heard his cries’: Mother of 4-year-old killed in fire at Delhi slum

Fire officials, on Sunday, had said the tenders were unable to enter the narrow lanes, surrounded by boundary walls of a nearby society, and it took them more than three hours to douse the flames

The fire engulfed over 400 jhuggis on Sunday (Express/Gajendra Yadav)

4 min readNew DelhiApr 29, 2025 05:15 AM IST First published on: Apr 29, 2025 at 05:15 AM IST

Volunteers from the sub-divisional magistrate’s (SDM) office are walking across the ash-black surface of the Bengali Basti in Rohini Sector 17, trying to jot down the names of people whose shanties were gutted in a fire on Sunday.

From a distance, Shaina Bibi looks on with a dazed expression. Her four-year-old son, Alam, was one of two children who died in the fire that engulfed over 400 jhuggis in the five-acre slum.

Sitting on the ruins of what was once her family’s home, she is waiting for word from her husband, Mithu, who is at Ambedkar hospital to collect their youngest’s body.

“My husband and I, and our three other children, were out yesterday. Itni buri kismat thi. (It was our fate). Only Alam was in the house. He was sleeping when the fire started. No one even heard his cries,” she sobs.

Bibi was in Rohini Sector 16 at the time of the fire, at a flat where she works as a domestic help. Mithu, a rag picker, was out too. Alam’s older brothers, aged 16 and 14, along with their sister, 12, were helping their father.

The oldest sibling says, “Pehli baar sab bahar the. (We were all out for the first time). And that’s when it happened.”

Police have registered an FIR pertaining to criminal negligence against unknown persons in the case.

Nearby, Gulshan, 49, is hurriedly walking towards his tent, with three white plastic containers, filled with what looks like pulses, potato curry and rotis. “My son and wife have been waiting for me since morning. People in societies are giving us food. Many political leaders came here, but no one has sent food or water. We haven’t even received tents,” he says.

Gulshan claims the fire department was just minutes away from the jhuggi cluster, and yet, they weren’t here on time. “Most of the homes were already burnt by the time they came,” he says.

Fire officials, on Sunday, had said the tenders were unable to enter the narrow lanes, surrounded by boundary walls of a nearby society, and it took them more than three hours to douse the flames.

The incident also triggered a political blame game between the AAP and the BJP.

AAP Delhi convenor Saurabh Bharadwaj, in a press conference on Sunday, hit out at the Delhi government for its delayed response to the fire and claimed CM Rekha Gupta did not even post about it.

“The fire broke out between 11-11.30 am, and at that very time, Delhi’s Chief Minister and the local MLA and Minister were listening to ‘Mann Ki Baat’ in Bawana, just 10 minutes away from the fire site. Yet, despite the proximity, the Chief Minister did not visit the spot,” Bharadwaj alleged.
The Chief Minister, in a post on X at 10.59 pm on Sunday, condoled the loss of lives and promised help from the government.

Around 11 am on Monday, BJP MP Yogender Chandoliya and Bawana MLA Ravinder Indraj Singh visited the jhuggi cluster, accompanied by the local SDM, and talked to the victims.

Hitting out at the AAP, Delhi BJP President Virendra Sachdeva said: “While our local BJP leaders and workers in Bawana were reaching out with aid, AAP leaders were attempting to worsen the situation by making inflammatory statements like ‘many children died’ on X.”