Two factory workers found dead

After the fire that gutted the galas in Sakinaka was doused in the early hours of Saturday, the bodies of two workers were recovered from the rubble.

The fire in the industrial gala at Subhash Nagar, Khairani Road in Sakinaka, had started at around 5.30 pm on Saturday. It was doused by 11.30 pm after which the cooling off operations began. As per the officers from Sakinaka police station, bodies of the two victims – Arti Lalji Jaiswal (25) and Piyush Dhirajlal Pithadia (42) were found at around 2 am.

Piyushbhai, a tailor, worked in the factory at Sakinaka since the last six months. Every evening around 8 pm when he was about to leave work for his home in Mulund East, he would call his wife Sangeeta. On Saturday evening, she did not get his call and became restless. Around 9:30 pm, she got a call from her husband’s colleague who told her that the factory he worked at was on fire and Piyushbhai was missing.

Sangeeta immediately called her husband’s close friend Rajeshbhai Bhinde who went to the factory with her. “We reached there by 11:30 pm. At the time, the fire brigade officials and police were engaged in the cooling off operations. They didn’t allow us near the site. It was around at 2 am that Piyushbhai’s body was found,” he said.

Piyushbhai is survived by wife Sangeeta and 19-year-old son Mihir. “Piyushbhai had big dreams about Mihir, who is a good singer. He wanted to support him to make a career out of this hobby,” told Bhinde.

Arti comes from a big family consisting of two elder brothers, four sisters and their parents. “The news of her being stuck in the fire came as a huge shock for all of us,” said her brother Pradip.

The job at the factory was Arti’s first job out of college and she had been working there for the last three years. “She was happy about being financially independent and had ambitions to make the life of the family and our parents more comfortable,” said Pradip.