Lucknow: An 11-year-old boy and his mother lost their lives and his father sustained severe burns in a cooking gas cylinder blast Friday morning in Jang Bahadur Ganj village under Pasgawan police limits in Uttar Pradesh’s Kheri district.
Police said the incident occurred when the mother tried to light a stove to prepare tea without realising that the gas was leaking, which led to the blast. The explosion was so massive that the entire house collapsed and seven people got buried under the debris, including the woman and her son who died. There were cracks in the neighbouring houses as well.
Identifying the deceased as Jeeshan and his mother as Haleema Begum, 35, the police said the boy’s father, Mohd Nabi, 32, sustained burns following the blast and has been admitted to the district hospital in Lakhimpur city. They were living as tenants in the house. The house owner Babbu Khan, his wife Nafisa Begum, 32, and their two children—Armaan and Sonam, too, sustained injuries, cops said.
After getting information, a team of police officials led by circle officer (CO) Arvind Kumar Verma reached the spot and carried out a rescue operation. “Most of the members of both families were asleep at the time of the incident. All the injured were rushed to a community health centre and later, shifted to the district hospital in Lakhimpur city,” the CO said.
Nabi, a resident of Shahjahanpur district, supplies hardware materials related to various works in Kheri along with Babbu. “Out of those injured, Nafisa is in a critical condition. The fire department will thoroughly investigate the reason behind the incident. The bodies have been sent for autopsy,” the CO said.
