New Delhi:
Two people were killed and several others were injured in a fire that broke out around 11 am in a building in Noida’s Sector 66 on Wednesday. The fire started when an electric bicycle being charged in the basement exploded and set several parked cars on fire, officials said.
A few weeks earlier, 15 people were killed in Aliganj in Lucknow, in a building classified as residential but converted into a coaching center with a single staircase. Previously, 21 people, most of them foreigners, had died at Delhi’s Hauz Rani, a guest house that had four times the number of rooms allowed and one point of entry and exit.
The names of these people will remain on file, the data will remain in the compliance report, and the cautionary tale will be repeated until the next one. They were everything to their families.
It’s hard to understand what happens the moment someone you love becomes one of these names. NDTV spoke to two sisters for whom this moment came without warning, on an ordinary Wednesday, in the form of a phone call from a police station that they didn’t even know existed until it happened.
The phone rang a little after 4 p.m. Mona (not her real name), 23, answered the phone, not expecting anything special. This was the Sector 71 Phase 3 police station.
One call turned into two. Two turned into ten. The network continued to interrupt the officer’s voice with static, forcing him to call back each time to finish what he started saying. Mona’s voice also broke, but not because of a bad signal. Somewhere between the third and tenth ring, she finally heard what she heard, and her voice wavered.
She was told that her friend had died in the fire.
Then a photograph appeared. The face was burned beyond recognition. The only thing she recognized was the medallion, the one he never took off.
They told her that he was undergoing treatment. Since her number was the last one on his phone, the police asked her to come to the station.
Read | ‘Even an ambulance can’t get through’: Inside Noida Lane, where two died in a building fire
“All I prayed during that taxi ride was that he was still alive,” her elder sister, the only guardian she has in Delhi, told NDTV.
The taxi ride seemed endless. When the two sisters finally arrived at the station, they were met at the door by an employee. She offered them water and hope that the man they knew, smart and full of plans, was still healing somewhere.
While they waited, she tried to make small talk. They asked what he does at work and how they know him. But when the sisters asked again, this time about his condition, the female constable told them bluntly: he was no more.
“I couldn’t believe it. I kept messaging him on WhatsApp; the messages weren’t getting through,” Mona told NDTV. “He never ignored my messages.”
His body was discovered around 3 p.m. The man they knew as a friend was Rishabh Singh, 27, a software engineer who had moved to Noida just two weeks ago. He lived in a paid guest room inside the building. His work was a mix of ten days a month in the city and the rest in his hometown Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh. He was the eldest in the family and the only one who earned money. He leaves behind his parents and younger sister.
Rishabh Singh moved to Noida two weeks ago.
Hours of calling followed. Mona called his family, his friends, his office, one after another, saying the same words each time, and the fear grew with each call.
She wanted someone to answer for this. – Why couldn’t you save him? she asked the police. “Why are you late?”
“We tried to save everyone. We even saved a six-month-old baby. I don’t know why he didn’t scream or react. We knocked on all the doors, but somehow he was not noticed,” an officer at the scene said, answering questions about the delay. “We were a small team. At the same time, we had to control the crowd from outside and pull people out from inside. There was panic everywhere. We are people too. We didn’t have proper equipment and even masks were scarce. However, we did what we could.”
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Mona knew Rishabh for four years. Her older sister knew him for about a year through her.
“He was a baby-faced guy with a very humble demeanor,” her sister said. “Even though we were the same age, he always addressed me as didi. Just three days ago we were hunting together in an apartment. I had no idea what was going to happen a few days later.”
Mona and Rishabh on the day of their first meeting, December 26, 2022.
According to her, Rishabh mainly worked in Balaghat and came to the office only when necessary. That changed recently when office work became mandatory and he temporarily moved in with a friend in Noida. He stayed in the city for only two weeks.
“I have never seen a person as attentive, kind and calm as him,” Mona said. “He was a hard worker too. Along with his work, he was preparing for the PCS and UPSC government exams.”
“He was always willing to help anyone around him, be it meeting someone after hours or driving him to the market. He rarely said no. Even after earning well, he was least bothered about spending money on himself. All he cared about was saving or supporting his family and friends,” she added.
Rishabh’s last photo clicked by Mona on July 10, 2026.
The other person who died in the fire was 24-year-old Sneha Srivastava from Muzaffarpur, Bihar.
Two days before the fire, the building’s landlord ordered Rishabh and other residents to vacate the building. The building was subject to reconstruction. An FIR has been lodged against the homeowner at the Phase 3 police station. He’s under arrest.
Fifty families living in rented rooms in the building were evacuated by firefighters before the fire was brought under control. But the building itself, by its design, made rescue difficult. He is standing in a lane too narrow for a car to enter without backing out. Residents said that when fire trucks arrived, they had to clear the way themselves to let them through.
Read | How huge fire safety gaps are putting India at risk of preventable deaths
This is not unique to one lane in Noida. Data compiled by the National Disaster Management Authority and the Ministry of Home Affairs shows that fire services in most parts of the country are short-staffed, with staff shortages of more than 90 per cent in several states, including Uttar Pradesh. Even where fire departments exist on paper, many do not have sufficiently trained personnel to properly respond if something goes wrong.
Residents of Mamura, the urban village where the building is located, say loose wires, cramped rooms and uncontrolled construction are part of everyday life, with landlords wasting money on renting out old plots as PG premises without thinking about how anyone can get out if something goes wrong.
Two days after Rishabh was ordered to leave, the building he was leaving also disappeared. And so did he.