Gopalganj LPG Leak Fire, Safiyabad: Children Killed, Many Burnt; Toll Reports Differ

What happened

On the evening of Tuesday, 13 October 2026, a cooking-gas fire tore through a house in Safiyabad village, under Baikunthpur police station in Gopalganj district, Bihar. Two children died, later reports said three, and well over a dozen people, many of them women and children, were badly burnt.

Most reports say the house belonged to Singhasan Manjhi. ETV Bharat and Patna Press reported that the family was cooking when the cylinder ran empty. While the women were taking the cap off a fresh cylinder to fit the regulator, gas started rushing out. A diya had been lit in the room for the evening puja, and the gas caught fire at once. One of the injured women, Sandhya Devi, told ETV Bharat that the gas filled the house within moments. UNI described it the same way: gas leaking from a cooking cylinder met the flame of an oil lamp, and the fire spread quickly through the house.

Gopalganj District Magistrate Sameer Saurabh told ANI that the fire was caused by a leak in a newly brought gas cylinder. Prabhat Khabar described the home as a thatched, hut-like house. Accounts differ on some details. Amar Ujala’s first report named the house owner as Premnath Manjhi and said the cylinder burst with a loud bang, while most other reports describe a fast-spreading fire rather than an explosion. Officials have not yet confirmed exactly how the gas escaped.

The children who died and the injured

The death toll is not settled, and names and ages differ between reports.

• Misty Kumari, daughter of Kanchan Sharma of Ghoghiya village under Mashrak police station in Saran district. ETV Bharat said she died on the way to Gorakhpur. Prabhat Khabar gave her age as 18 months in one report and two years in another; ETV Bharat and Times Bull gave it as 18 years. Prabhat Khabar reported that the family had come to Safiyabad, the home of Kanchan Sharma’s in-laws, for the Dussehra fair, and that her father was badly burnt and under treatment in Gorakhpur.
• A young son of Premnath Manjhi, named as Ankush Kumar, 5, by ETV Bharat and as Ayush Kumar, 6, by Prabhat Khabar. ETV Bharat said he died during treatment at Gopalganj Sadar Hospital.
• A third child. On 15 October 2026, Amar Ujala and Prabhat Khabar reported that three children had died and that three families received ex gratia cheques. Neither report named the third child or said when the child died, and we could not find that detail elsewhere.

Counts of the injured vary from 15 to about 25. The DM told ANI on 13 October that about 17 people had been admitted. Prabhat Khabar reported 18 burnt, Amar Ujala more than 20 and UNI about 25. Among them was a six-month-old baby, according to Prabhat Khabar. Neighbours and relatives who ran in to shut off the gas or pull people out were burnt too. By the evening of 15 October, Prabhat Khabar reported that 16 injured people were being treated at BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur, and villagers said three of them were not yet out of danger.

Response and investigation

Villagers pulled people out and doused the fire themselves. The injured were taken first to the hospital at Baikunthpur and then to Gopalganj Sadar Hospital. DM Sameer Saurabh told ANI that a team of doctors and 30 paramedical staff were attending to them. Several of the worst burnt were referred to Gorakhpur; the number reported ranges from two (the DM, on 13 October) to nine (Prabhat Khabar, 14 October).

Bihar Education Minister Mithilesh Tiwari, who is also the local MLA from Baikunthpur, visited the injured at Sadar Hospital and later met the families in Safiyabad. He told reporters there would be a high-level inquiry into how the leak happened, that responsibility would be fixed and that anyone found negligent would face action. Amar Ujala reported him saying that badly burnt patients could be shifted to the burns unit at PMCH, Patna, if needed. On 15 October, the Circle Officer of Baikunthpur handed cheques of ₹4 lakh each to the families of the three children, according to Amar Ujala and Prabhat Khabar.

On 15 October, the Akhil Bharatiya Vishwakarma Mahasabha gave a memorandum to the District Collector asking for a high-level probe. It alleged negligence in the gas supply and asked that the role of the gas company and the local distributor be examined. That is an allegation, not a finding. By the morning of 16 October 2026 we could not find any report of an FIR, an arrest or a published inquiry finding.

Why this matters

Changing a cylinder is an everyday job in Indian kitchens, usually done without a second thought. Safiyabad shows how quickly it can go wrong when there is an open flame in the same room. LPG is heavier than air. It spreads low along the floor and finds a diya, an agarbatti or a chulha long before anyone smells danger. In a small room or a thatched house, the fire spreads in seconds.

In 2024, fires from cooking gas cylinders or stove bursts killed 1,389 people in India, and 875 of them were women, according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India report. In Bihar, such fires killed 69 people that year. These are police-recorded figures and are likely to miss some cases.

Lessons for every home

• Put out every flame before you change a cylinder. That means the diya, agarbatti, chulha, mosquito coil and any other burner in the room. During Navratri, Dussehra and Diwali, keep puja lamps well away from the kitchen and the cylinder.
• If you smell gas, do not light anything or touch a switch. Switch off the regulator if you can reach it safely, avoid touching electrical or battery-operated equipment, open the doors and windows, and get everyone out.
• If gas keeps rushing out of a new cylinder’s valve, do not try to fix it. Get people out, keep every flame away and call the LPG emergency helpline 1906 from outside. Let the distributor’s mechanic deal with a faulty valve.
• Do not rush into a room full of gas or fire. In Safiyabad, people who went in to shut the gas were burnt too. Call 112, the fire brigade on 101 or an ambulance on 108.
• Keep the kitchen ventilated and keep the cylinder upright, on the floor, below the level of the stove.
• Burn first aid. Cool the burn under cool, clean running water for 20 minutes. Even 10 minutes helps if that’s all you can manage. No ice, toothpaste, oil or butter. Cover the burn loosely with a clean cloth and take the person to hospital. Children with large burns need hospital care quickly.

What is still not known

We do not yet know the name of the third child, or when and where that child died. It is also not clear whether the leak came from a faulty cylinder valve, a damaged washer, the regulator or the way the cylinder was being connected. Nobody has said whether the distributor or the gas company has inspected the cylinder. The findings of the inquiry the minister announced, and any police case, are still awaited, as is news of the people being treated in Gorakhpur. We will update this page when official findings are published.