New Delhi: “We have still not been able to move on,” a relative of the Aggarwal family, eight of whose members were killed in the Hauz Rani B&B blaze on June 3, told TOI Tuesday.The eight had gathered at the B&B to meet family patriarch Radheshyam Aggarwal (76), who was undergoing treatment for an acute lung infection at a nearby private hospital in Saket. What was supposed to be a reunion ended in a tragedy that wiped out an entire branch of the family.Among those killed were Radheshyam’s wife Premlata (70), son Vivek (47), daughter-in-law Tarjani (42), and granddaughters Jivisha (20) and Varya (16). Three relatives of Premlata who had travelled from Kishangarh in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district — Kamla (52), Ashok (56) and Jhaveri — also died in the blaze.The tragedy was compounded by Radheshyam’s death soon after. In his final days, as he waited to see his family, relatives shielded him from the devastating truth, telling him that his son was away on work to Jaipur.The relatives and cousins of the eight are now left to cope with the loss. In the days after the tragedy, they had demanded strict punishment for those operating the B&B without necessary permissions.The Aggarwals lived as a joint family in south Delhi’s Kotla Mubarakpur until a few years ago, when they moved to Gurgaon. Premlata, Vivek, Tarjani and Varya, fondly called Pearl, had travelled from their home in Gurgaon. Jivisha, known to the family as Angel, flew in from Bengaluru just hours before the blaze.Kamla, Ashok and Jhaveri initially planned to leave earlier but extended their stay at the family’s insistence — a decision that would leave their loved ones confronting an unbearable loss.For the entire family, the filing of the chargesheet marks another chapter in a tragedy they are still struggling to process, three months after the fire took away eight of their own.
