This story is from February 13, 2019

Delhi hotel fire: Wedding trip goes all wrong for Kerala family

P Nalini Amma, 84, had come to Delhi with 14 family members from Kerala for the wedding of her granddaughter. The marriage was solemnised on Friday, but the family had plans for a holiday, too. They checked into Hotel Arpit Palace on Sunday, and had to leave for Haridwar early on Tuesday but the fire broke out before that in the hotel.
Delhi hotel fire: Wedding trip goes all wrong for Kerala family
Nalini Amma and 14 members of her family had come on a wedding trip to Delhi. Three of them died in the fire.
NEW DELHI/KOCHI : P Nalini Amma, 84, had come to Delhi with 14 members of her family in the first week of February from Ernakulam district in Kerala for the wedding of her granddaughter, Pallavi Nair, in Ghaziabad. The marriage was solemnised on Friday, but the family had plans for a holiday too. They checked into Hotel Arpit Palace in Karol Bagh on Sunday, and having toured Delhi and visited Agra to see the Taj Mahal, they were scheduled to leave for Haridwar early on Tuesday.

Two of the touring group returned home on Monday. P C Vidyasagar, 59, Amma’s son, had arranged for a Traveller van to take the rest of the family to the pilgrimage site in Uttarakhand, and in preparation for the drive, they woke up around 4am on Tuesday. “We were to leave the hotel at 5.30am. After stopping at Hardwar, we planned to go to the Attari-Wagah border and visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar and Jallianwala Bagh before returning to Kerala on February 14,” disclosed Som Shekhar, one of the family members.
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Jayasree (left) and her mother Nalini Amma in Delhi
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The family had checked into Hotel Arpit Palace in Karol Bagh on Sunday.
It was while the visitors were getting ready that there was a power disruption, followed by smoke billowing in the hotel corridors and rooms. Most of them already awake, they alerted the others and rushed down. The aged Amma was unable to run to safety from the second-floor room. Vidyasagar went to assist her and his sister, P C Jayasree, 53, but the three were overwhelmed by the fumes.
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The surviving family members, who were helped down by fire safety officials, did a head count and found the three missing.

There was news only of one of the family dying in the blaze, but as a relative in Cheranallur in Kerala told TOI, “Our family checked the hospitals, but the bodies of Amma and Vidyasagar were not initially identified because they were burnt beyond recognition. It was only later that the rest of the kin realised what had happened.”
Jayasree’s elder son had left for Mumbai on Monday, while another son had stayed back. Her husband, who is in a Gulf country, has been informed, a relative said. Vidyasagar was a retired government employee, while Jayasree was a homemaker. As the news spread, the family’s relatives in Delhi reached Karol Bagh. Raj Shekhar Nair, who lives in Mayur Vihar I, said that the bodies were identified on the basis of the jewellery that the victims wore.
Two others from south India perished in the blaze. S Aravinth, 45, and K Nand Kumar, 32, both employees of a knitwear manufacturing unit in Tirupur in Tamil Nadu, were in Delhi to meet a buyer. They were scheduled to fly home on Tuesday morning.
Kumar had left his wife and three-year-old son at his father’s house in his absence. The employer of the two men has arranged for their kin to fly to Delhi to take back their bodies.
(With inputs from Tirupur and Kochi)
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