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South Delhi Hotel Fire Investigation and Legal Custody

Thursday, June 11, 2026
5 min read
South Delhi Hotel Fire Investigation and Legal Custody

A Delhi court sent the owner of a South Delhi hotel and his accountant into twelve days of judicial custody. This followed a catastrophic fire that ripped through the establishment, killing twenty-two people on June 3rd.

That’s the scale of it. A massive blaze consumed the Flourish Stays B&B in Hauz Rani, Malviya Nagar. Twenty-two lives lost. Several others were hurt too. It was one of those worst fires in the capital recently.

Judicial Magistrate Bhanu Pratap Singh was hearing a plea filed by the Delhi police. They wanted to hold hotel owner Lavkesh Bajaj and his accountant Jay Mishra. Both had been physically brought into court days after their arrests. The focus isn't just on the fire itself, though. It’s about who was responsible for letting it happen.

Investigators are digging now. Looking at staff violations. Safety lapses. How things let that fire get so out of control inside the building.

One thing that keeps popping up in the probe is the hotel’s licensing. That’s where things got tangled. During questioning, Mishra allegedly told officials something specific. He claimed he gave his personal papers to get the bed-and-breakfast license. All done at the request of Bajaj.

Now they’re looking into how that happened. How a license was pulled in an employee's name when Bajaj was clearly the owner. It opens up a whole new layer of scrutiny. Mishra wasn’t just some staff member, though. He apparently had serious control over everything running the hotel. Documents. Staff assignments. Licensing paperwork.

The investigation keeps circling back to where the actual fire started. Reports suggest the real trouble came from the kitchen area. That's where the sequence seems to have broken down.

Cook Keshav Negi is implicated here. Police said he allegedly switched on an oil fryer and made tea for himself. He apparently forgot to switch that device off while sipping his drink.

And then, the oil kept heating up. It hit its auto-ignition temperature. Fire started. Flames shot up to the ceiling almost instantly. Then everything else caught fire. The heat just gutted whatever was combustible nearby. Negi tried to stop it at first. But the blaze spread too fast. He reportedly fled as it tore through the place, according to the initial PTI report.

That thirty-minute window between when the first smoke appeared and when help finally arrived that’s under heavy examination now. What happened in those crucial minutes? It’s still a big question mark.

Written by Gree News Team — Senior Editorial Board

Gree News Team covers international news and global affairs at Gree News. Our collective of senior editors is dedicated to providing independent, accurate, and responsible journalism for a global audience.

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