Indian police on Monday announced the arrest of a doctor and the owner of an unauthorized children's hospital following a fire that caused the deaths of six babies in New Delhi.

“We have made arrests,” police officer Surendra Chaudhary told AFP on Monday, two days after a fire broke out at the Newborn Care hospital in New Delhi's Vivek Vihar district on Saturday evening.

According to Surendra Chaudhary, the hospital “does not have an evacuation system in case of fire”.

Additionally, the agreement expired in March and the owners have more than doubled the number of beds allowed in the department.

“The hospital has permission for a maximum of five beds, but has installed more than ten beds,” the police officer added.

– “Never hugged” –

Dozens of newborn babies were successfully evacuated from the hospital when the disaster occurred, but six of them died while being treated by doctors.

Five babies rescued from the fire are still recovering in other hospitals.

“We didn't even give her a name (…) I never even held her,” Anjar Khan, the father of an 11-day-old girl who died in the fire, told the Hindustan Times daily.

Vinod Sharma lost his son, just a day old, in the fire and blamed the hospital authorities.

“He was having breathing problems. “Doctors say he will get better in a few days,” Sharma was quoted as saying by the Indian Express daily. “We didn't think the hospital would kill him.”

It was passersby who first saw the fire and intervened, braving the flames, to save the newborn baby.

– “It is impossible to enter” –

Fire engines struggled to access the hospital, a narrow two-story building squeezed between houses, with no room on either side.

“We tried to control the fire, but there was no way to enter the building and rescue the 12 trapped babies,” Atul Garg, a firefighter, told reporters.

The fire, which was mobilized by fourteen fire trucks, spread “too quickly due to the explosion of oxygen cylinders”, the city's fire brigade director, Atul Garg, told the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the fire and death of a newborn baby as “heartbreaking” in a message posted on social media.

Also referring to the “heartbreaking” situation, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal warned that “those responsible for this negligence will not be spared”.

“We all stand in solidarity with those who lost their innocent children in this accident,” he added on social media.

– “Welding work” –

The fire broke out on Saturday hours after a fire at an amusement park in the Indian state of Gujarat, in the west of the country.

The death toll from the disaster rose to 28 on Monday, according to police. The fire was caused by welding work on the ground floor, fire chief Ilesh Kher told reporters.

“CCTV footage clearly shows sparks from the welding work falling onto the stack of corrugated cardboard sheets below, causing a fire,” Kher said.

“It spreads very quickly because the material is very flammable.”

The bodies were so badly burned that they have not yet been identified.

Police have charged seven people with deliberate murder.

The fires occurred as northern India was hit by sweltering heat, with temperatures in New Delhi reaching 46.8 degrees on Saturday, according to the Indian Meteorological Agency.

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