NEW DELHI: "My entire family has been destroyed. We never imagined something like this could happen to us," says Mahender Garg, who has lost his cousin and seven other members of his family in the devastating hotel fire in Delhi's Malviya Nagar.
Twenty-one people, including many foreign nationals, were killed and several others injured in the blaze that ripped through the Flourish Stay B&B on Wednesday morning.
Among the dead were 48-year-old Vivek Agarwal, his wife Tarjini, their two daughters, his mother and three other relatives.
Standing outside a hospital mortuary on Thursday, Garg recalls the last conversation he had with his cousin, chartered accountant Vivek Agarwal, barely 10 minutes before the fire turned fatal.
"He called me about 10 minutes before the incident got worse. He was frantically saying, 'I am trapped in the basement. Please send the fire brigade quickly and get me out of here'," Garg says, his voice trembling.
"All eight are gone. My entire family has been destroyed. They came here hoping that my cousin's father would recover from his illness. Instead, we are taking back the bodies of our loved ones," he says.
Relatives say the family booked rooms at the hotel because of its proximity to the hospital where Vivek's ailing father, Radhe Shyam Agarwal, was undergoing treatment.
As post-mortem formalities were being conducted throughout the day, the bodies of the deceased family members were handed over to relatives and taken to their residence in Gurugram, where the last rites are expected to be performed in the evening.
"There are no words to describe this loss. In a few hours, everything changed," a grieving family member said.
Standing outside the mortuary, relatives questioned the safety arrangements at the hotel, alleging that the building's design left guests with little chance of escaping.
"The hotel is located in a highly congested area. Going in and out is a hassle. There was only one exit point and a single staircase. Everything was covered with glass, and even the windows had iron grills," Garg alleged.
Prem Bansal, Tarjini Agarwal's father, said five members of his family and three other relatives were caught in the fire.
"Out of the eight people involved, five died from my side of the family," he said.
The tragedy has left surviving relatives struggling to comprehend the scale of the loss.
"My sister, my brother-in-law and my two nieces are gone. One of the girls had come from Bengaluru just two days ago. She was studying there in college and had come to see her grandfather," Tarjini's relative said.
Officials said the fire broke out at the hotel on Wednesday morning and spread rapidly through the narrow multi-storey building. Initial findings indicated serious fire-safety lapses, while residents alleged that sealed windows, a single staircase and restricted exits turned the building into a death trap.
At least 58 people were rescued from the hotel, but 21 succumbed to burns and suffocation, making it one of the deadliest fire tragedies in the national capital in recent years.