More than 15 people were injured, including a two-year-old girl, when a cooking gas cylinder exploded in a building in South-East Delhi’s Jaitpur area on Sunday, police said.
The injured persons have been admitted to Safdarjung hospital, police said, adding that four of the injured were in a critical state.
The incident took place soon after a handyman checked a cylinder at the second floor of a two-storey building. He told Maheshwar Sharma, the owner of the house, that there was no need to change the regulator as it was perfect and there was no leakage in the cylinder.
A few minutes after he left, a fire broke out in the house, when one of Sharma’s family members lit the stove. Sharma and his daughter-in-law Neelam have received minor burn injuries.
After seeing the fire, some neighbours rushed to the house to douse the flames, but the cylinder exploded in the meantime.
Residents informed the fire department and the police about the incident around 8.42 am. The police rushed to the spot and took the victims to the Safdarjung Hospital.
A police official said Naitik (7), Vinit Kumar (13), Radhey Sharma (30), Rajesh (30), Mandeep Singh (25), Vinod Sharma (30), Inder Pal (20), Rajesh (19), Nirmala (33), Kartik Singh (34) and Shivya Devi (50) were injured in the incident. He added that Isha (2), Vineet (15), Ajay (32) and Govind (35) were in the ICU.
“The impact of the explosion was such that the cylinder broke into two pieces, one of which hit the ceiling and broke the balcony’s railing; while the other part slammed against the utensils and furniture in the kitchen,” an official of the fire department said.
He added five fire tenders were rushed to the spot and it took four hours to douse the blaze and rescue the victims. At the time of the rescue operation, some parts of which had collapsed.
Preliminary investigation suggest that leakage in the cylinder led to the explosion, the official added.