Securitymen led Pawar to safety but left visitors to fend for themselves

Kishore Gangurde,PRO to Home Minister R R Patil,45,suffered injuries to the right knee and suffocation. He is stable. Satish Lalit,52,PRO to the Chief Minister,also suffered suffocation but is stable. Hemant Khaire,who works in the office of the Deputy Chief Minister’s PRO,has been admitted to the Critical Care Unit at JJ Hospital due to inhalation of smoke.

Shivaji Patil,NCP general secretary from Aurangabad,who was in the Dy CM’s waiting room with several others,said that on sighting the flames from the window,he rushed to Pawar’s cabin and alerted him. “After Ajit dada was led outside,his security men alerted the people in his office about the fire. By then,the electricity had gone,” he said.

In the confusion that followed with people struggling to push and pull the door,the door to the office got jammed shut even as a thick smoke rapidly engulfed the office.

“People started gasping for breath while a few started losing consciousness due to the smoke and heat. As I have a military background,I somehow slid down six floors through the water pipe outside the window. On my way down,I noticed that the fire was spreading through some of the AC units,” said Patil.

He added after Pawar told the fire brigade about the people trapped in his office. “They tried to use the fire brigade ladder to bring these people down but the ladder was not high enough to reach the sixth floor,” said Patil.