Did rats burn down a Vasai house by toppling a diya from a shelf on to a mattress kept underneath it? The elderly couple whose house is a black mess now, insists that it was the rats, as it was overrun by the rodents. While no one was hurt in the blaze, it took the fire brigade over an hour to douse the flames.

The fire broke out in flat number two on the ground floor of the C wing of Sameer Apartments located at Sainagar, Vasai West. A senior citizen couple — Hasmukh Parmar and Bharti Parmar — who owns the house, were not present at the time of the incident.