Locked up, twins killed in fire

 A pair of four-year-old twins suffocated to death after the 10ftx10ft room in their Tiljala home in which their mother had locked them up before stepping out caught fire on Tuesday afternoon.

Razia Ali, who had gone out to fetch her daughter from school, returned half an hour later to find the room filled with smoke. Youths from the locality broke open the door to find the boys still breathing.

They rushed Rahman and Rahim Ali Mollah to Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital, about 2km away, where they died after being admitted.

After lunch, the boys had gone to sleep in the room, on the terrace of a four-storeyed building on GJ Khan Road. Razia locked the door and left for a nursery school nearby where her daughter Nazia studies. This was their usual routine.

Md Aashiq Khan, who stays in the same building and whose wife was the first to notice the smoke when she went to the terrace to hang clothes out to dry, said: “We rushed to the terrace. The door of the room was locked from outside and smoke was coming out through gaps. We had no inkling that two children were inside. As we were trying to break open the door, Razia returned and told us that her sons were inside.”

Residents broke the door to find a wall of thick dark smoke. “When the smoke cleared a bit, we saw the boys lying in a corner of the room. They were unconscious but breathing,” said Md Salman, one of the youths who broke open the door.

Razia’s husband Nazir Ali Mollah was at the call centre where he works. His brother Manzoor, who stays on the second floor of the building, was also not home.

By the time four fire tenders reached the spot, the twins had been taken to the hospital.

“The fire might have been sparked by a short circuit,” said a fire services officer. Officers of Tiljala police station ruled out foul play.