Indian police arrest hotel owner after deadly fire

Indian police have arrested the owner of a New Delhi hotel where a fire killed 21 people, as investigators probe safety failures.

Police said owner Lavkesh Bajaj was arrested late Wednesday, hours after the blaze gutted the building, killing at least nine Indians and several foreigners.

Two foreigners have so far been identified — one a citizen of Liberia and another from Mozambique.

Building fires in India are common due to a lack of firefighting equipment and routine disregard for safety regulations.

People trapped on upper floors were seen jumping onto mattresses below as fire ripped through the Flourish Stay hotel in a densely packed neighbourhood of the city.

Police officers sit at the site a day after a fire at a hotel in New Delhi on Thursday. Reuters

Several residents were taken to hospital suffering from severe burns, as well as fractured bones after leaping into the street.

In a separate fire on Thursday morning, at least four people died in an intensive care ward in a hospital in Muzaffarpur in the eastern state of Bihar, district government official Subrat Kumar Sen said.

Malviya Nagar hotel had 25 rooms despite licence for 6: Former MLA

As the city comes to terms with devastating fire at the bed and breakfast facility in South Delhi's Malviya Nagar that claimed 21 lives, the former MLA and Aam Aadmi Party (AA) leader Somnath Bharti on Thursday pointed at flagrant violation of the building by-laws by the hotel and called the mishap an "abject failure" of BJP's four-engine government.

Speaking to newsmen, Bharti also questioned the inordinate delay in the arrival of fire tenders at the spot and demanded that accountability be fixed and those responsible be brought to book for such carelessness, leading to a deadly mishap.

Bharti, the three-time MLA from the Malviya Nagar constituency, was unrelenting and unsparing in his criticism of the BJP.

Pinning the blame on the BJP government for Delhi deaths, he said that the ruling party is running a four-engine government in the capital and has utterly failed in governance.

"The fire brigade is under your control, the MCD is under you, and the Delhi administration is your responsibility. From the Centre to the Assembly to the LG office to MCD, you are in power everywhere. Your four-engine government cannot escape responsibility for this," he said, slamming the BJP dispensation. He also demanded answers on how the rules were 'relaxed' for the gutted building, highlighting that the hotel had permission and a licence to run only six rooms, but was in reality operating with 25 rooms, many in the basement, thereby heavily burdening daily operations.

Agence France-Presse / IANS