Delhi inferno: 800 factory fires recorded in city in last 2 years

NEW DELHI: In the last two years, there have been 800 incidents of fire in factories in Delhi, the majority of them nestled in residential houses.
However, no corrective measure has been taken, indicating that the authorities have learnt no lessons despite accidents at these unauthorised factories and godowns happening on such a large scale.
None of these places has a no-objection certificate from the fire department but that has not proved to be deterrent for them as they collude with other authorities and function without any hinderance.
Data shared by the fire department has revealed that in 2022 and 2023, there have been around 400 fire incidents every year. Fifty-four cases of factory fires were reported in Jan this year. It was the same month when four people died in a fire at a rubber-making unit in Shahdara. Even in that incident, the only exit and entry passage that existed was blocked, leading to casualties. In Dec 2019, at least 43 labourers died in a blaze in an illegal factory in north Delhi’s Anaj Mandi. 17 people were killed and 30 injured after a massive fire gutted a factory in outer Delhi’s Bawana industrial area in 2018.
The fire department mandates fire certificates for factories, but violations are common. Officials have found that most factories operate in structures originally built for residential use, which don't meet safety standards for industrial activity. "This significantly increases the fire risk, as evidenced by past incidents,” a fire official said. Delhi fire chief Atul Garg said that in most of the cases they found that there was no fire safety arrangement inside the factory.
Whenever a fire breaks out in a factory in the city, Delhi Police arrests the accused owners and files chargesheets. However, these are not deterrents and infernos continue to claim lives.
In the Anaj Mandi fire, which took place in Dec 2019, the cops arrested four people — building owner Rehan, his brother Imran, Furkaan (Rehan's manager) and another man named Mohammad Suhail. In 2020, the crime branch filed the chargesheet saying that none of the owners was aware of the number of people working in the factory and had taken no precautions for their safety.
In the Bawana factory fire reported on Jan 20, 2018, the police arrested two co-owners Manoj Jain and Lalit Goyal, Surjeet Goyal and Girish Rathore, their partners in another factory in Bawana and Jain's son Rinku.