3 girl students die in PG accommodation fire in Chandigarh’s Sector 32

Tribune News Service
Chandigarh/Faridkot, February 22

Three girl students lost their lives on Saturday after a fire broke out in a PG accommodation in Sector 32, officials at Government Medical College and Hospital said. Two girls injured in the incident are undergoing treatment in the hospital.

As many as 36 students were putting up in the building. At the time of the incident, most of the students were out of the house.

Also read: As fire raged in PG accommodation, girl called father in Hisar

Several fire safety violations have been found by the fire officials in the building. There was an irregular construction on the top floor of the building.

As many as five girls were on the first floor of the residential accommodation when the fire broke out, police said.

Station Fire Officer Lal Bahadur said they received a call around 4 pm and four fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the blaze.

It took around 10-15 minutes to put out the fire, the officer said, adding that one of the women saved her life by jumping from the first floor.

“There was very low visibility because of smoke and fire,” Bahadur said. “Two women were found unconscious in a room and another with burn injuries was found in another room.”

With the blaze engulfing the first floor of the house, it was a difficult task for the fire fighters to take out the women out of the room.

Even as the police said the cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, it is learnt that one of the girls was charging her laptop when its adapter caught fire. 

The girls, aged 19-22, have been identified as Muskan, Riya and Pakshi.

They were staying as paying guests on the first floor of the building, Chandigarh Superintendent of Police Vineet Kumar said. Riya hailed from Kapurthala in Punjab, Pakshi from of Kotkapura (Punjab) and Muskan belonged to Hisar in Haryana.

The injured girls have been identified as Famina and Jasmine, according to police.

At time of fire incident, most of them were out of the PG, the police said, adding that a case would be registering against the building owner.

Several items, including fan, fridge, beds, on the first floor were charred, the police said.

The fire incident was a grim reminder of the vulnerability of students coming from several states, including Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, who put up at the “unsafe” paying guests in Chandigarh, which is a hub of educational institutions and that has led to a flourishing business of paying guests.

Students usually put up at nearby paying guests, some of which violate fire safety norms and even lack required permissions that become the cause of such fire incidents

'A brilliant student'

One of the three killed in the fire, Pakshi Grover, was originally from Faridkot’s Kotkapura town and was a student of BBA in Chandigarh’s SD College.

“Pakshi was a brilliant student who topped her class in Class 12 in DAV School Kotkapura. She was planning to join her brother in Canada after she finished her graduation,” sources in the family said.

Her father Navdeep Grover and uncle Sunil Grover are both on their way to Chandigarh. — With agency inputs