“We have made the arrests,” police officer Surendra Chaudhary told AFP on Monday, two days after the fire broke out at the New Born Baby Care hospital in the Vivek Vihar district of New Delhi late Saturday evening.
According to Surendra Chaudhary, the hospital “did not have an evacuation system in case of fire.” In addition, its approval had expired in March and the owner had arranged more than twice the number of beds authorized in the department. “The hospital had authorization for a maximum of five beds, but it had installed more than ten,” added the police officer.
A dozen newborns were taken from the hospital during the disaster, but six of them were already dead when they were treated by doctors. Five babies rescued from the fire are still recovering in another hospital.
Vinod Sharma lost his little boy, who was only one day old, in the fire and blames the hospital authorities. “He had breathing problems. The doctor said he would get better in a few days,” Mr. Sharma was quoted as saying in the Indian Express daily. “We didn’t think the hospital would kill him.”
It was passers-by who first noticed the fire and intervened themselves, braving the flames, to save the newborns. The fire, which mobilized fourteen fire trucks, spread “too quickly due to the explosion of an oxygen cylinder”, declared the director of the city’s fire services, Atul Garg, in the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the fire and the deaths of the newborns as “heartbreaking” in a message posted on social media. Also referring to a “heartbreaking” situation, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal warned that “those responsible for this negligence would not be spared”. “We all stand in solidarity with those who lost their innocent children in this accident,” he added on social media.
The fire broke out on Saturday a few hours after a fire at an amusement park in the Indian state of Gujarat, in the west of the country. The death toll from this disaster rose to 28 victims on Monday, according to police. It was caused by welding work on the ground floor, fire chief Ilesh Kher told reporters.
“CCTV footage clearly shows a spark from the welding work falling onto a pile of corrugated cardboard sheets below and causing the fire,” Mr Kher said. “It spread very quickly because the material was highly flammable.” The bodies were so badly burned that they have not yet been identified.
Police have charged seven people with intentional homicide. These fires occurred as northern India is gripped by scorching heat, with temperatures in New Delhi reaching 46.8 degrees on Saturday, according to the India Meteorological Agency.
