A holiday celebration turned harrowing in an instant. Television actor Divyanka Tripathi and her husband, Vivek Dahiya, narrowly escaped a fatal fire that swept through their residential building on November 7, Diwali eve. The couple evacuated their apartment alongside their five-month-old twin sons, extended family, and domestic staff. But the night ended in grief when building security guard Dhanpat died in the blaze.
The family got out by sheer chance. Tripathi and Dahiya had planned to step out for the evening, but accidental delays kept them inside their flat. That friction saved their lives. Lingering at home allowed them to detect the fire early, alert their household, and rush their infants down into the street. They spent the immediate aftermath sheltering at a friend's residence, believing they had escaped with only ruined property and rattled nerves. Then the news arrived from the building: Dhanpat had not made it out.
The loss struck a deeply personal chord for the household. Tripathi and Dahiya welcomed their twin sons in June after a decade of marriage, and Dhanpat stood among the very first people to bless the infants when they crossed the building threshold for the first time. Tripathi had spent the ensuing months imagining him watching the boys take their first steps in the building compound. That domestic image vanished in the smoke.
"Dhanpat Uncle, you were never just the guard of our building," Tripathi stated in an emotional public remembrance, sharing archival footage of the guard greeting her sons. "You were part of our everyday lives, someone we trusted, someone we had imagined in our children’s tomorrow." She added that both she and Dahiya spent hours praying the casualty report was an error while taking shelter with friends.
The fatal fire coincided with what was supposed to be a celebratory week for the household. November 7 marked both Diwali eve and the night preceding Dahiya's birthday. Earlier that very day, the couple had formally revealed their twins' names—Daivik and Vaidvik—during an appearance on their show Pati Patni Aur Panga season 2, five months after their birth. The contrast between that public reveal and the nighttime disaster could not have been starker.
Tripathi noted that the loss permanently altered how the family will view their home. When the twins grow older, she pledged, they will hear the story of the guard who stood at their door to bless them, and the fragile line between everyday routine and sudden tragedy.