India, April 30 -- When 69-year-old Bipin Ganatra reached one of the rooms on the third floor of the Rituraj Hotel in central Kolkata along with the fire-fighters to search for survivors around 3am on Wednesday, he found two kids and their father trapped in the room. They were all dead, he said.

"While the boy was lying on the bed, the girl's body was found near the toilet door. Their father was lying in the toilet. They were all dead. The bodies were not charred. They all possibly choked to death because of the smoke," said Ganatra, a voluntary firefighter who received Padma Shri for his work in 2017, told HT.

In all, 14 persons, including a woman and two children, were killed when a fire broke out in the six-storey hotel late on Tuesd...