The club owners’ brothers, Saurabh and Gaurav Luthra, have been arrested in Phuket, Thailand, five days after a tragic fire at a well-known Goa nightclub claimed 25 lives. The duo, who operated Birch by Romeo Lane in Arpora, left India only a few hours after the fire broke out in their club, which aroused suspicion and led to the involvement of multiple agencies in a manhunt.
Luthra Brothers’ Of Goa Club Detained In Thailand
Officials said that the brothers were on an IndiGo flight from Delhi to Thailand about five hours after the fire occurred late on Saturday. At that moment, the fire brigade was still on the scene, fighting the fire and rescuing the victims from the wreckage. Their abrupt departure resulted in the issuance of a Look-Out Circular and an Interpol Blue Notice almost immediately. A Goa Police team is now at the point of drafting a trip plan for Thailand to formally request their arrest and come back for questioning and court proceedings.
The question of their flight time was raised most notably because IndiGo was already facing a series of delays and cancellations on that day. The investigation revealed that the Luthras reserved their seats at 1:17 am on December 7, which was approximately the time when the fire brigade was at the scene of the fire, trying to contain it and rescue people trapped inside the club.
The brothers, however, denied insistently from abroad that they were in the wrong and that they should be allowed to return. They filed a petition in the Rohini court in which they declared that they were being falsely implicated. They maintained that they had nothing to do with the daily operations of the nightclub and that their trip to Thailand was for attending a business meeting, and not for fleeing from the police. Their application for pre-arrest bail was lodged before they were located in Phuket.
The Goa Police FIR, on the other hand, details a catastrophic scenario of neglecting safety measures. The police charge the nightclub with a lack of fire extinguishers in working condition, absence of alarms, suppression systems, and updated fire audits, all of which are mandatory for places that are open to the public. The complaint also mentions that the owners, managers, and event staff allowed a fire-performance to go on even after realising that it was going to be extremely dangerous. It is said that there were no emergency exits either on the deck or ground floor, leading to those who died because of were trapped inside the rapidly spreading fire.
Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant had said before that the accused would be off the hook for a short time only and warned other nightlife places to keep to safety standards or face severe consequences.
On the other hand, Ajay Gupta, one of the club’s partners, was arrested in Delhi on Tuesday. Subsequent to his arrest, he spoke to India Today TV, saying that he was a silent investor only and that he was unaware of any operational misconduct.