Hyderabad: A purported phone conversation of a man who died in the recent fire at the Batcha furniture showroom in Nampally surfaced on Friday, revealing his desperate pleas for help as the blaze spread through the building.In the audio clip, Mohammed Imtiyaz (30), a driver associated with the showroom, can be heard telling someone outside that he was unable to escape. “All three of us, including two children, will die. There is no exit here,” he says in the clip. He said the exits were blocked and there was zero visibility.A senior police officer from the Central Zone confirmed the authenticity of the audio and said it would be recorded as evidence.In the recording, the person at the other end of the call can be heard advising Imtiyaz to move to a second cellar in an attempt to escape. However, he responds that he cannot find a way out. The audio also captures the sounds of children gasping for breath.On the day of the fire, Imtiyaz and four others were trapped in the cellar of the building as flames engulfed the premises. The deceased were identified as Praneeth Kumar (11) and Akhil Kumar (7), siblings who lived there with their parents; Mohammed Imtiyaz (30); Syed Habeeb (31), an employee of the showroom; and Bebi (60), the building’s guard, who lived in the cellar with her two sons. The first body was recovered around 9 am on Jan 24 following a nearly 20-hour rescue operation.Following a complaint filed by a relative of one of the victims, Abids police registered a case under Sections 110 and 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against showroom owner Satish Batcha. He was arrested on Friday evening and later remanded to judicial custody.
