Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 13: Stepping out of their hotel room briefly for a meal proved to be their undoing. Gaurav and Saurav Luthra, soon to be deported to India in connection with the Goa nightclub fire that killed 25 people, stepped out of their hotel in Thailand for a meal on December 9 that led the authorities to discover that the brothers, for whom the police were searching in India, were in Phuket.
Thai authorities had already put the hotel under watch after inputs from Indian agencies. When the brothers stepped out of the hotel, Thai immigration and police officials verified their identities and travel details. With their passports already being scrutinised by Indian authorities, the brothers were questioned by officials, sources said.
Once their identities were verified, the Luthra brothers were detained from their hotel room and taken to immigration for further legal process. The deportation process was then started after formal papers were received from India. A blaze swept through the nightclub at Arpora village in North Goa around midnight on December 6, killing 25 persons, 20 of them nightclub staff and five tourists.
Gaurav Luthra, 44, and his brother Saurav, 40, were detained in Thailand on Thursday, even as a Delhi court rejected their transit anticipatory bail pleas, citing the duo’s conduct and the gravity of the offences. They were then brought to Bangkok by Thai officials on Friday and kept at the Suan Phlu Immigration Detection Centre. They will remain at the immigration centre until their deportation formalities are completed.
A law enforcement team from India is expected to take custody of the accused brothers soon. An emergency travel certificate will be issued by the Indian embassy to validate their travel back to the country since their passport remains cancelled, which marks a serious overstay issue.
A Goa court also remanded Ajay Gupta, allegedly a silent partner and investor in the nightclub, to police custody. While the Luthra brothers were allegedly at a wedding in Delhi at the time the fire broke out and fled to Thailand within hours, Gupta was in Goa and was later traced to a Delhi hospital.
In Goa, the administration continued its drive against illegalities at nightclubs and other tourism establishments, sealing ‘Goya The Night Club’ at Vagator on the ground that it had been constructed on agricultural land. The state also banned the use of fireworks, sparklers, pyrotechnic effects, flame thrower-type devices, smoke generators and similar equipment inside tourist establishments. Fireworks were said to have caused the blaze at Birch by Romeo Lane.
When they return to India, the Luthra brothers will face charges including injury causing death, manslaughter and murder by organising a fire show “without taking proper care and caution and without providing fire safety equipment, other safety gadgets.”
Meanwhile, days after the devastating fire, Kristina, the dancer during whose performance the fire broke out, has been left emotionally shattered, her husband claimed. Kristina’s husband Mikhail Bukin described that she was struggling to cope with survivor’s guilt and trauma. He said his wife has barely slept in nearly a week, has stopped stepping out of their home, and has lost close to five kilograms due to stress. “She is constantly crying. Her life is destroyed. Twenty-five people have lost their lives, but my wife has died alive,” he said, calling it the darkest period their family has ever faced.
The second heart-breaking account comes from another survivor, Bhavna Joshi who is still grappling with unimaginable loss after the fire claimed the lives of her husband and her three sisters, four of the five tourists to be perished in the fire. “In seconds, the fire became huge and uncontrollable. My husband and my sisters were trapped in it. I saw everything,” she said. “We were enjoying ourselves. Everything was normal. Suddenly, there was fire. It was small at first, but they could not control it,” she said.
The fire, which turned what was meant to be a musical night into a nightmare, has triggered a widening investigation. Goa Police have recorded more than 60 statements so far, including Kristina’s, which was taken on December 12. Several accused are being produced before the court as their custody periods come to an end.
