India News | Mundka Fire: Delhi Police Writes to over 10 Agencies, Seeks Documents Related to Building

New Delhi, May 18 (PTI) The Delhi Police on Wednesday wrote to more then 10 agencies, including the BSES and DJB, to get documents and details related to the building in Mundka where a major fire had broken out last week and claimed the lives of 27 people, officials said.

Building owner Manish Lakra and two brothers -- Vijay and Harish Goel -- who rented two floors in the building to run their CCTV camera and router manufacturing and assembling company and in whose office the fire is suspected to have started, were arrested.

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Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) Sameer Sharma said about 15 documents related to the building and the Goel brothers' company have been obtained from the three.

"We have sent letters to more then 10 agencies, including Delhi Jal Board and BSES among others, to get more documents and details related to the company and building to also ascertain if any fake fire NOC was obtained by them," he said.

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The officer said during investigation, it has emerged that there was a change-over switchboard for electricity connection on the first floor of the building where cardboards and other materials were dumped which may have caused the fire to spread quickly. But, the picture will become clear after the forensic reports are received.

“After a preliminary inquiry, it was found that the building was congested due to storage of CCTV cameras and routers, workstations, and offices. Steel sheets were used to separate the staircase from floors and partitions inside the building were used for storage," Sharma said.

Police have recovered 27 bodies from the building. As of Sunday, 14 of them had been identified as women and six as men. Nineteen people are still missing.

To ascertain the identity of the dead and trace those who are missing, police are trying to track the the location of their mobile phones, an official said.

The blood samples of the Goel brothers have also been taken as part of the investigation, he said.

Lakra was arrested from Ghevra Mod while he was en route to Haridwar in Uttarakhand on Sunday, two days after the incident.

He was running a real estate business and also owned a shop on the ground floor of the building, police said, adding that his family members are yet to be traced.

Lakra used to live in a two-room-kitchen house with his mother, wife and two children on the fourth floor of the same building. They managed to escape to the adjacent building when the fire broke out, police had earlier said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)