Mumbai's Hotel Galaxy Fire: Kenyan-Gujarati NRI Couple Among Victims

Two Kenyan NRIs hailing from Gujarat, planning to get married soon in Nairobi, were among the three whose lives were snuffed out in Sunday’s major fire in a hotel in Mumbai's Santacruz east, officials said.
They were: Kishan Halai, 28 and his fiancee Rupal Vakhariya, 25, who were trapped in a sealed room in the burning Hotel Galaxy and succumbed in the blaze, shocking their families in Gujarat and Kenya.

The young duo hailed from Rampar village in Mandvi district of the Kutchh region, but had settled in Kenya for decades, though they maintained strong links with their native village.

Halai and Vakhariya, along with their families, had come to India last month to attend a wedding of his younger brother in their native village.

After bidding a farewell to his newly-married brother and parents last week as the wedding was completed in Mandvi and shopping in Ahmedabad, the Halai and Vakhariya families had reached Mumbai on Saturday and scheduled to catch a flight to Nairobi on Sunday.

The flight was rescheduled and the two families were put up at the Hotel Galaxy till the next flight but their plans ended up in a tragedy that has left their kin shocked.

As their room burnt, a panicked Vakhariya had called up her parents Dhanji, Manjula and sister Alpa, in another room asking them to leave the hotel, but later Mumbai Fire Brigade teams rescued them safely.


Halai and Vakhariya in Room No 304, and another businessman, Kantilal Vara, 48, in Room No 302, who had rushed there, got trapped owing to the locked windows and jammed doors. - IANS