Pol Colonel Nithi Banthuwong, put in charge of identifying the dead, said yesterday that there were three Singaporean men among the dead identified as Teo Sze Siong, 26-year-old Lu Weiye and 41-year-old Leslie Yeo.

Friends and relatives of air stewardess Chalika Chavez Prankaew, 27, and a Thai-Burmese Abac master's degree student Win Chor Piang, 26, conducted a ritual to collect their spirits.

The couple had joined five other friends to ring in 2009 at the club, a friend who asked not to be named said. Of this group, three escaped; three died and one is still missing.

Since he was a regular patron, he said he knew where the exits were, but said the smoke was too thick and too many people rushing to find their way out. However, he managed push his way downstairs and jump out of a broken glass window, but his wife could not make it.

Meanwhile, Prasert Khumpol, 49, and his wife Nongkhran, 45, claimed the body of their daughter Patcharee Khumpol, 25, forensic officials identified her by DNA samples. Prasert tearfully said that he had no idea where his daughter was going to ring in the New Year, and upon hearing about the inferno, he prayed fervently that she had not gone there.

However, he said, one of his daughter's friends had called him to say she may have been caught in the fire. That was when he started looking for her in every hospital, and even visited the Thonglor police station everyday.

Prasert said he was later told by one of Patcharee's male friends from Singapore that he had been waiting for her to come out of the restroom when the fire had broken out, but she never showed up.

The father did not lose hope even after he found his daughter's care. He said a fortune-teller had told him that she was still alive. Sadly the prediction did not come true.

"I don't know what to say. I am very sad. After this we will make merit for my daughter so she passes onto a better place. If we are to be born again, I hope I become her father again," he said with tears in his eyes.