In a Raksha Bandhan day tragedy, a four-member family including two minor sons, perished in a major fire that broke out in an electrical hardware shop in Pimpri-Chinchwad early on Wednesday morning, police said.
The blaze was noticed by neighbours as the family slept on a mezzanine floor inside the shop, located in Pooja Heights building in the Chikhli area, around 5.30 am.
Locals, along with the fire brigade teams, attempted to douse the flames with buckets of water and sand, and the conflagration was brought under control after nearly two hours.
Later, the rescuers retrieved four bodies – Chimanram Choudhary, 48, his wife Namrata, 40 and their two teenage boys, Sachin, 13 and Bhavesh, 15 - who lived inside the shop.
The preliminary cause of the fire is suspected to be a short-circuit but a probe has been ordered to ascertain the exact reasons for the fire, whether there was a fire-extinguisher in the shop and how the victims could not reach out in time.
The flames reduced to ashes almost the entire merchandise and stocks of an unknown value lying in the shop and also caused some damage to the upper floors of the building from where several panicked residents had rushed down at dawn.