Mumbai, Oct 16 (IANS): A senior citizen couple and another person died in a major fire that broke out in a flat in the upmarket Lokhandwala Complex in Andheri West, officials said here on Wednesday.

According to the BMC Disaster Control, the blaze was reported around 8 a.m. and firefighters and other rescue teams rushed to the spot.

A 10th-floor flat in the 14-storeyed building, Riya Palace at CR No.4 in Lokhandwala was in flames with dark clouds of smoke emanating from there.

However, the conflagration was confined to the flat itself, though many panicked neighbours from the same floor and upper floors ran off their homes to wait in the society garden.

The BMC said that several fire-tenders and water tankers, plus an ambulance and concerned rescue staff were at the site, fighting the blaze, and succeeded in extinguishing it within an hour.

Three persons in a badly injured state were rushed to the BMC's Cooper Hospital at Juhu where they were declared dead on admission by the hospital authorities.

They were identified as Chandraprakash Soni and Kanta Soni, both aged 74, and another man living in the flat named Pelubeta, 42, though his relationship with the deceased couple is not clear.

The bodies of the trio have been sent for autopsy while the exact causes of the fire, - tentatively suspected to be owing to a short-circuit - are being investigated, said an official at the spot.

A resident said that the people living in the flat appeared to have been charred to death as the senior couple and the third male may not have had time to escape from the flames and the smoke.

The Andheri-Lokhandwala-Oshiwara Citizens Association said that the MFB comes from Irla and owing to narrow roads in the Lokhandwala Complex precious time or the golden hour is lost to save lives, and called for the need to widen the roads given the spate of redevelopment activities across the city.