Charminar fire accident: Two narrow entrances blamed for high toll

All the shops are shut.
| Photo Credit: G. Ramakrishna

Two too narrow entrances, one to the first floor home and another wider one to the enclosed shopping space led to the disastrously high toll in the early morning blaze in Hyderabad on Sunday (May 18, 2025.) The home and shopping complex belonging to the well known jeweller family of Poonamchand Modi is right at the entrance between Gulzar Houz and Charminar Kamaan.

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“Fire engine going inside? You must be joking. Only one person can climb the stairs of this small shutter and three persons can go inside abreast at the same time. When we reached the shutters were closed and there was heavy smoke restricting our entry,” informed a Fire Department official, who was among the first to reach. 

“If the persons had rushed to the terrace the toll could have been lower. The narrow entrance hampered our operations though we reached within few minutes,” said the official. 

Firefighters at work after a fire broke out in a building near Gulzar Houz in the Old City area of Hyderabad in Telangana, Sunday, May 18, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
PTI

The wider entrance lead to the large pearl trading shop owned by the family from which the bodies and survivors were brought out. Viral videos showed how the family members were brought out on bedsheets and then heaved over the wheeled stretchers to take them to parked ambulances on the cobbled street.

“Shiv Shakti, M.  Poonamchand Jewellers, Modi Pearls and Telangana Pearls are some of the businesses owned by the family with five brothers. All the shops in the area are shut in solidarity with the family though it is a Sunday,” informed Shaikh Nayeem who owns a toys business in the area.