A blaze turned deadly in Shahjadpur on Monday, March 3, claiming four lives in Majumdar Villa on Bir Uttam Rafiqul Islam Avenue. As flames tore through the six-story building, four people—guests at a residential hotel inside—raced upstairs to escape. But a locked roof door sealed their fate, trapping them in a suffocating haze. Firefighters found their bodies amid the ashes, a grim testament to a preventable tragedy.The fire erupted at 12:17pm, sparking chaos in the densely packed structure. “We got here in 10 minutes,” said Kazi Nazmuzzaman, Assistant Director of Fire Service Dhaka Zone, briefing reporters after dousing the flames. 

The ground floor housed a hardware shop, the second a beauty parlour, and floors three to six were a residential hotel. “The second floor was an inferno—flames and thick smoke everywhere,” he recounted. Four fire units battled for 30 minutes, taming the blaze by 1:04pm.

But for four souls, it was too late. Three were found lifeless in the attic, one in a bathroom—victims of smoke, not fire. “The roof door was shut tight,” Nazmuzzaman said. 

“They fled upstairs to escape the fumes, only to hit a dead end.” Two others were pulled out injured, dazed but alive. The dead were handed to police, their stories silenced by a locked exit.

“They didn’t burn; they suffocated,” Nazmuzzaman stressed, his voice heavy.

What sparked it? “Too early to tell,” Nazmuzzaman admitted. “No one from the owner’s side has surfaced—we’ll dig deeper with a probe committee.” 

But the building itself told a damning tale. “It’s a RAJUK nightmare,” he said—no fire safety plan, no firefighting gear, narrow stairs, and windows sealed with glass. “If those windows were open, the smoke might’ve vented. Instead, it choked them.”