Man Bahadur BK and Prem BK, Kashiram's cousins who had gone to work together from the village, narrated the incident as follows:
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Nine members of two families from Takura, Siddhakumakh Rural Municipality-2, Salyan, died after a gas cylinder exploded in a shop in Arki, Solan district of Himachal Pradesh, India, on Sunday night.
Nine people died in the gas cylinder explosion that followed the fire, including Dhan Bahadur BK, 33, his wife Kavita, 32, their daughter Radha, 10, Renuka, 22-month-old son Rajan, and Kashiram BK, 47, his wife Tika BK, 32, their daughter Anu, 12, and their son Kiran, 7. Kashiram's siblings Man Bahadur BK and Prem BK, who had gone to work together from the village, narrated the incident as follows: 'When the economic situation was so dire, we three families came to work in a market called Arki in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh two and a half years ago. Brother Kashiram BK and Dhan Bahadur BK's family lived in Rajiv Gupta's house and I lived in another house nearby. We all worked together in the same place.'
On Sunday (27th), we had been working since morning, a hundred meters from the market. After working all day, we returned to our room at around 7 pm. Everyone was tired, so after eating in a hurry, my brothers went to sleep and I also went to sleep.
There was a commotion at exactly 1 am. They started shouting that there was a fire. After hearing that, we all came. The stairs leading to the brothers' bedroom were on fire. In the basement of the same house, they had kept all kinds of materials, from gas cylinders, for sale.
The shop was also on fire. Everyone, including my brother, was screaming from inside. Some locals from the village who were sleeping in the back room of the house where the fire broke out managed to jump from another staircase and survive. While we were going to get water to put out the fire, we heard the sound of many cylinders exploding at once. We ran away in fear. I heard the sound of about 10/12 cylinders exploding. Then the house was destroyed and the sound of my brother's family screaming in the room stopped. After the gas cylinder explosion, the fire was so big that no one could do anything. We stayed there all night. At 6 am, a team of security personnel arrived at the scene. The fire brigade also arrived. The fire brigade extinguished the fire. The security personnel surrounded us from all sides. They did not let us sit close. After the fire was brought under control, when we went closer, we saw various parts of people's bodies in pieces. That too, burned by the fire. It is impossible to tell which body part belongs to which. We are in shock now. The team of security personnel is demolishing the damaged house where the explosion took place and is collecting the body parts of the deceased. We are forced to remain silent while watching.
After a commotion at around 1 am that there was a fire, I (Prem Bik), who was sleeping in a house near the house where the fire occurred, hurriedly got up and looked outside to see the stairs leading to the bedroom of my relatives Kashiram Bik and Dhan Bahadur's family on fire. As the fire started spreading all around the house, the relatives living in the back room of the same house managed to escape through another staircase, but Kashiram and Dhan Bahadur's family were trapped inside. They were screaming from inside the room.
Not long after, some cylinders kept for sale in the shop in the ground floor of the house exploded at once. Then everyone's voice stopped at once. As there was no work to be done in the village, we, a family of 6/7 people from the settlement, had left our home two and a half years ago and moved to a neighboring country with many dreams . We used to come here before. It had only been a few years since I came here with my family. All my dreams have been shattered after the untimely death of two family members. We have not been able to think of anything.’
