At least 37 people, including several children, have been killed in a series of fires in the past 24 hours as India battles a brutal heatwave.
Seven newborn babies died after a children’s hospital caught fire in the national capital Delhi, while another fire in a residential complex in the city killed three people.
Indian police said on Monday they had arrested a doctor and the owner of an unlicensed hospital where six newborn babies died when a fire erupted in a crowded ward without fire exits.
The blaze broke out at the New Born Baby Care hospital in New Delhi’s Vivek Vihar area late Saturday evening. In the crucial first minutes, bystanders spotted the fire and braved the blaze to rescue the newborns inside.
Senior police officer Surendra Chaudhary told that the hospital did “not have a fire exit system”.
Its licence expired in March and the owner filled the ward with more than twice the number of beds it previously had permission for.
“The hospital had permission for up to five beds but they had installed more than 10 beds,” he said. “In view of all this, we have made the arrests.”
Five babies pulled out from the fire are still recovering in another hospital.
The blaze in the hospital on Saturday broke out just hours after a separate fire at an amusement park in India’s western state of Gujarat. The toll from that fire rose to 28 on Monday, police said.
The corpses were so badly burned they have not been identified so far.
Police have charged seven people with culpable homicide in connection to that fire. The two fires came as northern India was gripped by intense heat, with temperatures in Delhi hitting 46.8°C.
