It was the kind of hour when most people are in their deepest sleep. Somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning on Wednesday, a fire broke out in a residential house in Brijeshwari Annexe, Indore. By the time neighbours realised what was happening, thick black smoke was already pouring out of the building and flames had started climbing through the floors.
Eight people are dead. Three were pulled out alive. One of those three later died in hospital.
How It Started
Indore Police Commissioner Santosh Kumar Singh pointed to the cause — an electric vehicle that was being charged outside the house suffered an explosion at its charging point. That initial blast was enough to start the fire.
What made it so deadly was what happened next. Inside the house, more than ten gas cylinders were stored. One by one they caught and exploded, pushing the fire further and faster through the building. The house belonged to Manoj Pugalia, who ran a polymer business and also kept flammable chemicals on the premises. That combination — the EV explosion, the gas cylinders and the chemicals — turned what might have been a containable fire into something far worse.
Locked Doors Slowed the Rescue
When police arrived they ran into an immediate problem. The house had electronic locks on its doors and the fire had already disrupted power. Getting inside took precious extra minutes as officers worked to break through.
Once they got in, three people were found alive and were rushed to a nearby hospital. Seven bodies were recovered from inside the building and sent for post-mortem. One of the three survivors did not make it and passed away at the hospital, taking the final death toll to eight.
A neighbour of Manoj Pugalia was already at the scene before official help arrived. He said that residents managed to pull three people out safely before the police and fire brigade teams even reached the spot.
Rescue Operations and What Followed
Indore District Magistrate Shivam Verma was on the ground coordinating the response. Fire tenders worked for hours to bring the blaze under control. NDRF teams moved through the wreckage floor by floor checking for anyone still trapped.
Verma confirmed that two floors had been fully cleared and teams were working through the third. The fire was eventually brought under control but the scale of damage to the structure made the search slow and difficult.
PM Modi Announces Relief
Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded to the tragedy on Wednesday and announced financial relief for the families affected.
He wrote on X — “Deeply pained by the loss of lives in a fire mishap in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Condolences to those who have lost their loved ones. I pray for the speedy recovery of the injured.”
He announced that Rs 2 lakh from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund would be given to the family of each person who died. Those injured in the incident will receive Rs 50,000.
The Questions This Raises
The Indore fire is not just a local tragedy. It puts a spotlight on something that is becoming a wider concern across Indian cities — the safety of electric vehicle charging at home.
EVs are being adopted faster than the infrastructure around them is being built. Charging cables run out of windows, parking spots outside homes double as charging stations and the electrical load on older buildings was never designed to handle this kind of demand. When something goes wrong in that setup the consequences can be catastrophic.
Add to that the practice of storing gas cylinders and commercial chemicals in residential buildings — something that happens quietly in countless homes across the country where business and living space overlap — and you have a combination that fire safety experts have been warning about for years.
Investigation into the Indore fire is still ongoing. But the early findings already tell a story that goes beyond one house in one city.
