Another resident who gave her name as Amishi said the fire had melted the glass in her front door. “I was packing my husband’s lunch at the time. I tied a piece of cloth on my face…soon my home was filled with smoke. I was rescued by the Fire Department,” she said.

Hours after the fire had been put out, the worst affected flats at Gaur Green Avenue presented a picture of catastrophic devastation.

In one apartment on the ninth floor, every surface – walls, floors, ceilings – was covered in layers of black soot. A once-sturdy wooden door frame hung limply, resembling the cracked, burnt bark of a dead tree. Under piles of still-smouldering debris lay the family’s household belongings, charred beyond recognition.

“I had put all my savings in our home. There is nothing left,” businessman Anurag Sharma, who lives in a tenth floor flat, said. “My wife had gone to drop our children to school when the fire broke out.…