As over 25 fire engines and a dozen water-tankers tried to douze the blaze, rescue workers pulled screaming residents out of the building, while others tried to escape raging flames by jumping to the ground from the ill-fated building.

As hordes of people, surging to pitch in, swelled to unmanageable proportions, explosions from cooking gas cylinders within the building fed the flames. Police even resorted to a lathi-charge to contain the rising panic. With the building, said to be very old, being located in a narrow lane, rescue personnel at the sitesaid some of the commercial stalls were dismantled to make way for tankers and ambulances rushing to and from the building. Fire brigade said it was too early to determine the cause of the blaze but did not rule out a short-circuit or gas leak.

Huddled outside the cordon thrown around the building, the Shaikh family -- residents of Fatima Manzil -- were still coming to terms with their fortuituous escape. ``We had gone out to meet someone...,'' a family member said, wondering at the fate of their neighbours.

While the fire raged, residents of buildings surrounding Fatima Manzil were told to come out. Bedsheets were spread like a trampoline as residents jumped to safety. ``They were injured in the process. People got panicky.

The fire spread so fast that no one had a clue as how to come out of the building,'' he said.

Kuber group chief in custody
Kuber group chairman Praduman Kumar Sharma and executive director Mukesh Mohan Sharma have been remanded to police custody by the Economic OffencesWing for investigations. They were arrested recently in Delhi and were brought to the city after Mumbai police obtained their custody from the Tis Hazari Court, Delhi.