3 of family choked to death as refrigerator catches fire

Thiruvananthapuram: Three members of a family, including a five-year-old child, died after inhaling poisonous gas that emanated from a refrigerator that burned due to short circuit in their house in the early hours of Thursday. The deceased are Anil Raj, 33, his wife Aruna, 27, and their only child Alisha. They were found dead in their bedroom in their rented house located at Maruthur junction under Mannanthala police station limits in the outskirts of the city.

Police said the bodies were found in the morning after the house owner noticed that the family had not come out of the house. The house owner, who lived nearby, told the police that the family would be up by 5.30-6am every day and could be seen working in the kitchen that was located outside the house. But on Thursday they noticed that both the kitchen and the house door remained locked and grew suspicious and summoned the cops.

Mannanthala sub-inspector J S Aswini said that the interior of the house was filled with thick soot. The main door of the house opened into a living hall. The bodies were found in the bedroom attached to the hall. While the body of Alisha was lying on the body, Anil Raj and Aruna were lying on the floor. All three bodies were also covered under thick soot.

"Preliminary assumption is that the death happened owing to suffocation," the SI said. A refrigerator kept in the hall was found to have exploded. All the other electrical installations, including the wiring, were burned. The smoke from fire might have caused suffocation, he said.

The house was very small and stood below ground level adjacent to MC Road. The ventilation consisted of two windows, both of which were tightly closed, and an exhaust fan that got melted in the fire. These factors might have helped carbon monoxide spread fast inside the house, the police added.

Anil and Aruna both hailed from Dhanuvachapuram near Neyyattinkara. Both of them were working as laboratory staff of Mar Baselios College of Engineering and Technology. They shifted to the rented house at Maruthur near the college owing to convenience. Alisha was a pre-primary student of St Goretti's Girls Higher Secondary School, Nalachira near Mannanthala.

The postmortem was conducted in the afternoon. The bodies were taken to Dhanuvachapuram for funeral by evening after the college fraternity paid their last respects.