Delhi hotel fire: Punished for a guilty system

It is 12 noon on June 3, a day surprisingly not as hot as Delhi can get at this time, but the water from the fire extinguishers has dried up. About 200 people are gathered in a narrow lane in South Delhi’s Hauz Rani, breathlessly recalling what had happened. This is the scene of a disaster. The smoke has now cleared up over the six-storeyed Flourish Stay, a bed-and-breakfast, but the building is charred. The structures flanking it are also blackened.

Members of the fire brigade say that at least 49 people were pulled out of the building. “There was no emergency exit, the doors on the terrace were locked, and the glass façade made rescue difficult. It left the trapped choking,” says one officer. In addition, the doors were powered by electricity, so could not be opened once the fire broke out.

Hauz Rani is a pre-independence urban village that has seen unregulated growth over the years. Homestays illegally converted into multi-storey hotels run cheek by jowl with homes and real-estate brokers’ offices. The lanes are so narrow only a single car can fit. High-tension electricity wires hang dangerously close to the traffic below. Tall and small buildings are packed into the lal dora area, a historic land classification demarcating a village habitation zone. Here, construction on an existing structure does not require approved building layout plans.

The uniformed forces are swarming around, as the traffic police barricades the area, up to 1 kilometre around Flourish that had caught fire at 8:30 that morning. The residents of Hauz Rani are on the street. Some guests from the homestays around are also out, now worried about their safety.

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The police does not allow those from Micasa, the lodges next door, to enter the building. One couple from Congo is panicked because they need their medicines from the room. Another asks about what will happen to their passports and money. Across the next few hours, foreign nationals begin leaving with their luggage.

By the evening, the boards of all the surrounding bed-and-breakfast places have been taken down, fearing a government crackdown.

Outside this mess, within a kilometre, are two of Delhi’s newer areas Malviya Nagar, from where the police and fire brigade arrived; and Saket, with a steel-and-glass strip of malls and a hospital. The lodges serviced those coming into Delhi for treatment to this hospital. Twelve of the 21 people who died were foreign nationals from Congo, Liberia, Nigeria, Mozambique, and Bangladesh.

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Last month, an under-construction 5-storey building collapsed in Saidulajab, killing six. Earlier in the month, a fire in a Vivek Vihar residential building killed nine. In March, another fire in Palam also killed nine, all from the same family. Over two-and-a-half months ago, the Delhi government promised a fire audit across the city.

The first hour

Ambulances began to arrive at 8:40 a.m. when locals had begun the rescue operation. “It did not take the fire more than a few minutes to blow out of the ground floor. There were sparks in the dangling web of wires which people would later step on to jump,” says Riyazuddin Mansuri. Mansuri and his son Armaan, who had a mattress shop under a tin shed right opposite the B&B, used up their stock of over 20 mattresses to lay them down for the guests who began jumping. At the time, he says, he did this by instinct. “It felt like the thick, black smoke would swallow the whole neighbourhood.”

He recalls feeling breathless, hours after. “People gathered and the narrow streets were already jammed by the time ambulances and fire services came. We were looking at people hanging from the windows, glass shreds falling on the road,” he remembers.

The fire brigade arrived 45 minutes after the fire broke out, though officials say the call came to them only 20 minutes into the fire. The police reached within 20 minutes, says the station house officer of Malviya Nagar Police Station, Vinay Yadav. “They were late,” the officer says. “There were ladders, mattresses, but no water,” SHO Yadav says.

Seven fire tenders and 39 Delhi Fire Service personnel reached the spot and doused the fire within 20 minutes, they say. Deputy Chief Fire Officer A.K. Malik says that the nearest fire station at Geetanjali Enclave did not have water tenders and firefighting units had to be called from over 7 km away. “We received the fire units that were called from Nehru Place and Bikaji Cama Palace. With Delhi traffic, it took them 19 minutes to reach the spot,” he said.

Mohammed Israr Khan, a resident of Hauz Rani village, saw smoke rising towards the north of his house. He rushed to the spot with his brother. Three hours later, his yellow undershirt and shorts, were black. He remembers that “A victim’s phone rang while I was helping with the rescue. It was the person’s mother asking after her child. I could not say anything and handed the phone to the police. I didn’t want to be the bearer of the bad news,” he says.

Along with Wasim, Amir, Shahrukh, Afzal, Hazi, Shoaib, and Anish, he helped pull victims out and carry them to ambulances. “We were also clearing the way where cars and auto were parked,” he says. Locals and officials later removed cars and autos to make way for ambulances.

Once the fire services arrived and broke open the main door, rescue teams entered with residents, who lent a hand. “When we entered the building with the police and rescue teams, we could not see anything. There was only smoke, screams, and wailing from every floor,” Khan says. “Many had tried to make an escape and were trapped in the basement.” Over the next couple of hours, he says he saw some gruesome sights.

Head Constable Dinesh Yadav says he helped rescue five people trapped on the west side of the building: “When I climbed the ladder to break open the window of the bathroom on the second floor, two Nigerian women were unconscious. For others who were trapped on different floors, there was no way to go out. I guided three people to climb the rainwater pipe along the building and jump from there,” he says. Dinesh suffered injuries from glass shreds and had blisters on his arms from the melting cables that fell on him. Ten constables and head constables were taken to AIIMS for treatment.

Police action

The same day, the police apprehended the owner of the building, Lavkesh Bajaj, for negligence. An initial enquiry revealed he had been misusing a ‘Bed & Breakfast’ license issued by the Tourism Department of the Delhi government. His permit allowed for only 6 rooms, but he had been running 26 rooms including a basement. He had no clearance from the fire department. He also did not have permission to run a kitchen and a restaurant on the ground floor from where the fire allegedly started.

While no hotel staff was present on the spot, Bajaj was allegedly seen driving past the raging building in the CCTV visuals that went viral later. While the fire was raging the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the Capital’s civic body, received an application between 9.30 a.m. and 10 a.m., for the yearly renewal of a “tea-and-snacks” license “without seating” at the same address. It had expired two months ago.

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The police registered an FIR against Bajaj under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita’s Sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 326 (g) (mischief by fire), 324 (5) (wrongful damage of property), 125 (a) (endangering human life and safety), 125 (b) (causing hurt by negligence), and 287 (negligent conduct with respect to fire). He was produced in court the next day.

The police are still looking for Jay Mishra, Bajaj’s accountant who handled day-to-day operations of the hotel. The B&B license had been issued in his name.

Lives lost and saved

Vivek Aggarwal, the head of finance at an insurance company, lost his life in the fire along with seven members of his family, in the basement. His wife, daughters, and mother lived with him in Gurugram, while his aunt and uncle had come from Ajmer to meet his father, who was in Max hospital. His cousin Ashok Goyal had come from Kishangarh in Uttar Pradesh.

Prem Bansal, Tarjani’s father, says, “I had called my daughter just 15 minutes before the incident to ask when they had planned to go and meet her father-in-law. She said it was too early to think about that and cut the call. Half an hour later, Vivek’s brother, Mahendra, informed me about the fire,” he says. Mahendra was outside the hotel, trying to rescue the members, after he received a call from Vivek that there had been a fire. He alleges that the fire services did not have the cutters to cut through the basement shutters in time.

Isaac, a 62-year-old Nigerian national, is mostly quiet, says the attendant in the Intensive Care Unit of Max hospital. He is injured but his wife didn’t survive the fall from the third floor with him to escape the fire. The couple had travelled to Delhi for Isaac’s medical treatment.

Habib, 20, from Bangladesh, had come to donate a part of his liver to his father. When he jumped from the second floor, his liver was impacted. Doctors have told him that he may not be able to donate it now. His father is in the same hospital, awaiting a liver transplant. Three others, including his mother, sister, and uncle, all jumped with him, and are injured. His mother says she will never stay in a hotel again.

The action plans that followed

By the evening of the fire, a series of condolences and measures to fix accountability were announced by the Delhi Government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an ex-gratia of ₹2 lakh from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund for the next of kin of each deceased member, and ₹50,000 to each of the injured.

Lieutenant-Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu chaired a meeting along with Delhi Home Minister Ashish Sood and ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident along with a month-long drive from June 4 to review safety compliance of all hotels, lodges, inns, nursing homes, coaching institutes, restaurants, and other vulnerable commercial establishments in the city.

Chief Minister Rekha Gupta sought a detailed report on the incident and warned of strict action if any lapses were to be found. On June 4, Gupta announced a compensation of ₹10 lakh to the next of kin of the people who died in the fire. The injured will receive ₹5 lakh each, she said, after she visited Max hospital, where most of the injured were.

The following day, teams were formed across Delhi’s 13 districts by the government. In addition, the MCD began surveying all buildings with five floors. The civic body had also identified 12 B&Bs in the Hauz Rani area to seal, as they were violating permits given by the Tourism Department.

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Simultaneously, Tourism minister Kapil Mishra tells The Hindu, “The department only gives permission for B&Bs. Regulatory enforcement is not carried out by our department, nor is any other follow-up inspection.” Flourish Stay was granted the licence in 2024, valid through 2027. Mishra also says his department will review the draft policy, which was put in the public domain on May 26, 2026, for suggestions. The draft policy has proposed a self-certification and self-renewal framework, with “deemed approval” within 7 working days, down from 30 days in the 2007 policy.

Meanwhile, MCD officials, including South Zone Deputy Commissioner Rakesh Kumar, say that it is not their job to check for violations under the B&B policy. Kumar says that those who grant the licence are supposed to enforce. “We cannot take any action on buildings constructed before 2014 as they are exempt from MCD building by-laws,” he says, of the structure that was built in the 1980s.

In January this year, after the Goa fire tragedy claimed 25 lives the month before, the MCD asked all 12 zones to conduct scrutiny of all licences, including the instant ones. The “tea-and-snacks” licence comes under this category. For this B&B, the scrutiny, which involves a physical inspection, was marked “closed” a day before the fire. This meant there were no violations detected.