Woman killed, husband injured as garment store catches fire in Noida

Chaubey also said they are investigating the cause of the fire, adding prima facie it looks like it occurred due to a short circuit.

“We suspect that the shop caught fire at around 2:20 am. But since they were sleeping they could not find it. It was locked from the inside so nobody could enter,” Rohit’s brother Pawan told The Indian Express.

Pawan, who also works at the same shop, said when his brother and sister-in-law found out about the fire surrounding them, his brother came out and asked his wife to follow. “But soon she stopped responding and had my brother returned to check on her, he would not be able to come back,” Pawan said.

“A lot of times, thieves have broken into the nearby shops. To avoid theft, my brother and sister-in-law would sleep at the shop after locking it from inside,” he said.

The two-storey building had a shop on the ground and a godown on the first floor. “We opened it almost 16 years ago,” said Sharma.

Sharmas have a house nearly 200 metres from the shop where Rohit lives along with his mother, Saroj Sharma, Pawan, and his two children.

“It was a walking distance from our house. They would return to the shop at 8 pm after having dinner every night. They were trying to save the shop from theft. I did not know this would happen,” said Saroj, Rohit’s mother.