Mumbai: Four persons were killed and 10 others injured after a fire broke out in a multi-storey residential building in neighbouring Navi Mumbai shortly after midnight on Tuesday, police said.
Among those who died in the tragedy in the wee hours of Diwali were a six-year-old girl and an 84-year-old bed-ridden woman, officials said.
A short circuit was suspected to be the cause but an investigation was underway.
The fire started at around 12.30 am on the 10th floor of Raheja Residency, MGM Complex in sector 14 of Vashi area. Flames soon spread to the 11th and 12th floors, said a fire brigade official. As many as 40 fire brigade personnel with eight fire tenders and police rushed to the spot and the blaze was put out by 4 am, he said.
Among the deceased were Vedika Sunder Balkrishnan (6) and her parents Sundar Balakrishnan (44) and mother Puja Rajan (39) who lived in flat 1205.
Kamala Hiralal Jain (84), another deceased, lived on the 11th floor. She was bed-ridden and could not move after the fire broke out, the official said.
Most of the injured persons, admitted to two hospitals, complained of suffocation, said Sachin Kadam, chief of the Disaster Management Cell of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation. Seven of them were discharged later in the day and the condition of the remaining three was said to be stable, he said.
The fire brigade also rescued more than a dozen people from the building, Kadam
said.