Child actor Veer Sharma and his brother die in Kota apartment fire

In a heartbreaking incident, eight-year-old television actor Veer Sharma, known for his roles in Shrimad Ramayan and Veer Hanuman, and his elder brother Shaurya Sharma lost their lives after a fire broke out in their fourth-floor apartment in Kota early on Sunday.

According to police, the blaze erupted around 2 am in the drawing room of the family’s flat at the Deepshree building near Anantpura police station. Veer and 16-year-old Shaurya, an engineering aspirant, were asleep and alone at the time. Their father, Jitendra Sharma, a coaching centre teacher, was attending a bhajan programme, while their mother, actress Rita Sharma, was in Mumbai.

Neighbours raised the alarm after spotting smoke billowing from the apartment. They broke open the door and found the boys unconscious. Despite being rushed to a nearby hospital, doctors declared them dead on arrival. Preliminary findings suggest both died of suffocation caused by thick smoke, as the flames did not spread beyond the drawing room.

Kota superintendent of police Tejeshwani Goutam said a short circuit is suspected to have triggered the fire, though the exact cause is yet to be confirmed.

“The drawing room was completely gutted, while other parts of the flat only had burn marks,” she said.

Circle inspector Bhupendra Singh added that neighbours managed to extinguish the blaze using fire extinguishers kept in the building, and no fire tenders were called.

The children’s bodies were handed over to their family after their mother returned from Mumbai. In a gesture of compassion, the family donated the boys’ eyes to an eye bank.

An FIR has been registered under Section 194 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNSS) Act, and further investigations are underway to establish the sequence of events that led to the tragedy.

The incident has left the Kota community and the television fraternity in shock, with friends, neighbours and fans mourning the untimely loss of the young actor and his brother.

With agency inputs