Eight people have been killed and several injured in the fire. PTI
A short circuit during the charging of electric scooters may have led to the fire at a Secunderabad building that claimed eight lives, a preliminary investigation has found. The probe has also found that about 40 electric scooters, gas cylinders and batteries were stored in the basement of the building.
The fire that started at the electric scooter showroom later spread to a hotel in the same building. At the time of the incident, at least 25 people were in the hotel.
Shocking visuals showed some people jumping out of hotel windows in a desperate attempt to escape the flames. Police said they asked some residents to jump, and they are safe.
All the eight deaths were caused by suffocation, officials have said. Many tried to take the stairs but failed as smoke had filled up the stairwell and reduced visibility to zero.
"It appears there are 23 rooms in all the four floors in the hotel. The smoke traversed through the staircase from the bottom up to the top floor. Some people who were sleeping in the first and second floors came to the corridor through the thick smoke and died due to asphyxiation," said CV Anand, Police Commissioner, Hyderabad.
The Fire Department rescued several people using cranes. Local residents also joined the rescue operations.
Sanjay Kumar Jain, director general of Telangana fire services, said it was "largely the smoke, and not fire, that caused the disaster".
The injured have been shifted to hospitals, Mr Anand said. He said it is being investigated if the fire was caused due to overcharging of batteries at the electric scooter showroom.