Five teenagers and an eleven-year-old boy suffered burn injuries on Wednesday after the unit where they were working caught fire. The six were playing at Jeevanjyot Rahivasi Sangh near Tata Power Lines in Dharavi when one Israr Ali Shaukat Ali Sheikh (32), an owner of a small perfume-making unit, asked them to fill gas from cylinders into aerosol cans. The youngsters agreed but at around 5:30 pm when someone lit a matchstick near the flammable gases the entire unit caught fire.

 The six persons—Ramesh Karve (17), Sachin Chande (17), Irshad Sayed Akhtar (11), Harish More (13), Surendra Jaiswal (14) and Daniel Pedroy (18) suffered serious burn injuries. They were rushed to Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, Sion, by their parents. The Dharavi police have arrested Sheikh who was not present there at the time of the incident.

Senior police inspector Rajendra Thakur of Dharavi police said, “Sheikh has been arrested and charged under various sections of the IPC as well as sections of the Child Labour Act and the Juvenile Justice Act. His unit was also illegal. We have named Pedroy as an accused too as he lit the match.”

 Karve and Chande suffered 40-50% burns. Jaiswal suffered 60% burns and Pedroy suffered 85% burns. Akhtar and More were in a critical condition. Both the police and the parents of the children claim that they are not child labourers and it was only on the day of the incident that the children met Sheikh.

 “Despite being a widow I’ve never sent my child to work,” said Kailashdevi Jaiswal   who works in Shatabdi Hospital as a helper and is the mother of Surendra Jaiswal.

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