4 min readNew DelhiJun 13, 2026 07:39 AM IST
First published on: Jun 13, 2026 at 07:39 AM IST
Two years ago, when Subhash died of cancer, his family moved out of the house they shared with his elder brother Suresh in Tughlakabad’s Railway Colony in Southeast Delhi. His wife Guddi, son Pankaj, and daughters Soni and Moni rented a third-floor flat in Tughlakabad’s Gali 1, lined with ramshackle buildings.
On Friday morning, Suresh waited near the same road, watching Delhi Fire Services (DFS) personnel bring out the bodies of his brother’s family. Pankaj, Soni and their maternal grandmother were among those killed after a fire broke out in the parking lot on the ground floor of the six-storey building earlier in the day.
“It was my responsibility to look after them. Now they are gone. Pankaj had just got a job. They needed more space, that’s why they had moved out,” Suresh said. Pankaj was working at a mobile repair shop, while Soni worked at a boutique in Udyog Vihar.
“Both worked very hard to meet the medical expenses of their mother, who suffered from a speech impairment and often fell sick. They also paid the educational expenses of their youngest sister Moni, who had enrolled in a BA course this year, said Suresh.
“I was asleep when I got a call around 3 am. Moni is still in the hospital. I will have to tell her that her brother and sister are no more,” he said.
Near the burn ward of Safdarjung Hospital, meanwhile, sat Guddu, the brother-in-law of Mumtaz (24), who was at her home on the fourth floor of the building, when smoke started to enter her kitchen.
“Her husband Deepak had gone to Agra for work… Around 3 am, I got a call from my brother, saying that there was a fire at his house, and Mumtaz is trapped,” he said.
By the time he reached Tughlakabad from Madan Pur Khadar, Mumtaz had been rescued and shifted to hospital. “She was brought down from the balcony… The neighbours were trying to douse the flames with water,” he said.
One of them was Saurav Sharma (35). The scream of his 16-year-old daughter woke him up —“Papa, smoke is coming out from the next building.”
By the time Saurav reached the window, the electricity had been cut. The burning building stood barely a few feet away from his house. “An elderly man on the second floor was screaming for help… While I called the DFS and then went downstairs, my daughter got a saree and threw it towards the man. He used it to climb down,” said Sharma, who works for a private firm in Gurgaon.
Renu Bhutani (45), Saurav’s neighbour, was watching Crime Patrol, when the screams began. Realising that the terrace offered the only escape route, she and her son Manav climbed to the roof of their four-storey building. “Since the building on fire is six-storey, my son got two ladders. We tied them together and reached the terrace of the burning building. The terrace door was stuck, so Manav broke it open,” said Renu.
As the door opened, thick smoke billowed out. Unable to breathe, they broke open two water tanks with stones and let the water flow into the building to reduce the smoke.
“We then poured water on ourselves and rushed down the stairs. We heard the screams of two girls on the fourth floor, and of a couple on the third. We broke open their gates and brought them out through the same route we used to enter the building,” Renu said.
Charred remains of two-wheelers after the fire at a five-storey residential building in the Tughlakabad Extension area in New Delhi (PTI). 
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