Firefighters try to douse a fire which broke out in a building at Mundka, in West Delhi earlier this month. (Express Photo)Ten more bodies of the Mundka fire victims have been identified through DNA matching by the forensic teams, officials said Thursday. With this, 20 of the 27 people who died in the massive fire at a commercial building in Outer Delhi’s Mundka on May 13, have been identified.
The remaining seven are being processed for sample extraction and testing at the forensic lab in Rohini, said officials. The ten victims identified are Pooja, Madhu Kumar, Preeti, Poonam, Mushrat, Geeta Chouhan, Sonam, Amar Nath Goyal, Asha and Bharti Negi, said officials.
Soon after the incident, families were called to the mortuary to identify the bodies but only seven deceased — Tania Chauhan, Mohini, Kailash Jyani and his son Amit, Yashoda Devi, Vishal Sinha and Drishti Ram — were identified. Officials said other bodies were “highly charred” and to confirm the identities, they had to send all 27 bodies to the FSL. After weeks, the police identified three more victims — Madhu Devi, Narender Lal and Muskaan on Tuesday.
Deputy commissioner of police (outer) Sameer Sharma said: “We informed the family members of the victims about the tests and they can collect the bodies after an autopsy.”
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The forensic team said they took samples from all 27 bodies to confirm identities. The DNA samples were extracted from the bodies of the deceased while blood samples were taken from the closest relatives and these were then matched, said officials.
On Thursday, results of 10 bodies came up. The deceased were identified as – Most of the victims are women who worked at the building as sales executives, helpers or as technicians. The fire at a four-storey building in Mundka injured 15 others too.
“We received two reports where names of all 10 deceased were mentioned by the FSL and it said the samples matched with that of the family. We have informed the families now,” added DCP Sharma.
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