New Delhi: Around 56 shanties housing Rohingya refugees in Madanpur Khadar area of New Delhi were gutted in a fire late on Saturday night, reports said. However, no casualties were reported in the incident.
Quoting DCP southeast, RP Meena, a report by Hindustan Times, said: “It has been revealed that around 56 jhuggis of Rohingyas having a total population of around 270 people were burnt to ashes in the fire. The cause of the fire is not known yet and appropriate legal action is being taken,” said.
Delhi Fire Services (DFS) chief Atul Garg said that the fire department had received a call about the fire at around 11.54 pm on Saturday. “Five fire tenders were rushed there to control the blaze. The fire was brought under control around 3 am on Saturday,” he added.
Rohingya refugees have been living on a plot of land in Madanpur Khadar near Kalindi Kunj since 2012 when the land for setting up the camp was given by a non-governmental organization.
The report quoting Minara Begum (24), a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar’s Rakhine region, said that around midnight on Saturday, she woke up to frenzied screams of people. “We were sleeping when I heard some commotion around 12 am. People were shouting ‘fire, fire’. We ran out without our slippers. There was no time to think or salvage anything. Everything that we had has been destroyed,” Minara was quoted as saying, who has been living in the refugee camp along with her seven-member family since 2012.
Refugees living in this camp are no strangers to tragedy. Over the past several years, the camp has witnessed a number of conflagrations, including three so far this year. While residents claimed they diffused the previous two blazes before it went out of control, they recall a massive blaze had gutted the entire camp on April 15, 2018.
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