Three people of a family died in a fire that broke out inside a 200-sq ft dwelling in a chawl on Lamington Road at 2 am on Monday. Insurance agent Santosh Joshi (39), wife Bharti (37) and their nine-year-old son Rishikesh were sleeping in a tiny airconditioned room on a mezzanine floor when the fire engulfed their home. While fire officers said the almost ubiquitous mezzanine floors and lofts used as additional residential space inside the tightly packed chawl rooms were major fire hazards,they were unable to establish the cause of Mondays blaze. The fire brigade took more than two hours to douse the fire that gutted two houses of the three-storey Sharada Building. Bhartis mother Prabha Kulkarni (65),who was sleeping downstairs managed to escape. Kulkarni reportedly told investigators that she woke up to see sparks from the wiring near the fridge. Though she tried to alert her daughter and son-in-law,they apparently could not hear her shouting. Deputy Fire Officer Anil Kumar Patil said the loft was wooden and had a tiled roof. It looks that they might have died of suffocation. Their bodies were in a half charred state when we pulled them out, he said. A few areas in Girgaum have such old chawl buildings,and most of them have loft structures too, said Minal Juwatkar,a corporator from Girgaum. According to her,there could be as many as 1,000 such mezzanine structures inside homes in this area alone. They cannot be called illegal structures,as most of them were built around 60-100 years ago. Even the BMC doesnt count them as illegal, Juwatkar said. In the late 90s,the BMC had proposed to regularise all unauthorised lofts and mezzanine structures built in the city up to August 15,1997. It is a huge shock and a loss as the whole family died in the incident, said Sunita,Joshis sister. We lost even little Rishikesh. Ironically,Rishikesh never used to sleep in the loft. He usually slept with his grandmother,said Joshis uncle Manoj Pai. We heard someone shouting at 2 am. But only came to know of the incident when Joshi's grandmother came out and banged the doors of neighbouring houses for help.Residents then gathered to douse the fire, said Neeta Panchal,a neighbour on the same floor. According to residents in the area,Joshi was a charming person,a sports enthusiast and an exceptionally good table tennis player.
