Woman, Friends Celebrating Birthday Die In Mumbai Rooftop Pub Fire

Mangalore Today News Network

Mumbai, Dec 29, 2017:  A woman celebrating her birthday and her friends were among the 14 who died in the fire that started from a rooftop restaurant in Mumbai’s Kamala Mills complex late last night. The 28-year-old woman’s body was identified by her boyfriend, the police said.

 

A dozen of the dead are women, most of them in their twenties and early thirties. Most of the bodies were found near a women’s washroom, witnesses said. The police believe the deaths were because of suffocation.

They were at the "1 Above" restaurant where the fire reportedly started from a false roof made of inflammable material. The flames rapidly spread to the Mojo Bistro next door. There were over 150 people on the top floor of the building when the fire broke out around 12.30 am.

Kamala mills in central Mumbai is among the sprawling mill compounds that have evolved into bustling hubs of restaurants, pubs and offices over the years. Mushrooming restaurants in the 37-acre premises in Lower Parel have turned the complex into a popular nightlife spot. Several media houses are also in the complex; the fire disrupted the broadcast of some channels.

It took more than three hours for firemen to bring the blaze under control. A police case has been filed against "1 Above".

Dr Sulbha KG Arora, a Mumbai doctor, was at one of the restaurants when the fire broke out. After somehow escaping the blaze and the chaos afterwards, she tweeted her horror. "Before we knew it, the whole place was engulfed in a matter of seconds. There was a stampede and someone pushed me. People were running over me even as the ceiling above me was collapsing in flames. Still don’t know how I got out alive. Some powers were definitely protecting me," she said in tweets, calling the incident the "scariest thing I have ever survived".

Courtesy: NDTV