Goa Police to Leave for Thailand Soon, Will Bring Luthra Brothers Back ASAP: CM

PANAJI: A combined force of the Goa Police and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will travel to Thailand in a couple of days in order to ensure the arrest of the runaway Luthra brothers, Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant said on Thursday, and he hoped that the two were brought to the state as early as possible.

Their allegations of Gaurav Luthra and Saurabh Luthra, who owns the north Goa nightclub Birch by Romeo Lane, as having violated the regulations in the running of the club, where 25 people died after a blaze broke out late on Saturday.

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According to Sawant, the two are detained by the Thai police at the request of India regarding the case of culpable homicide not amount to murder that was filed against the pair in Goa.

“With the help of the Government of India, central agencies with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), we were able to detain them this morning. In a few days, the Goa Police and the CBI police will go there and bring them to Goa,” Sawant said.

“I’m happy to note that the police and the central agencies were able to fast-track work promptly to ensure their detention. They will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” Sawant also said.

A day after the state police had approached MEA requesting the cancellation of their passports, news broke out on the arrest of the Luthra brothers in Thailand.

According to the police, the two brothers, who were the main owners of the club, had booked their flights to escape to Phuket, Thailand, 90 minutes after the huge fire in the facility had broken out.

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“The Goa police investigation has revealed that the Luthra brothers booked tickets to Thailand on MMT platform at 1.17 AM on 7th December. While Goa Police and Fire Services were battling the blaze and rescuing those trapped, the accused were preparing to flee the country,” Nilesh Rane, who is the Goa Police public relations officer, said on Wednesday.

The co-owner of the club Ajay Gupta, who was arrested in Delhi on Wednesday before being ferried to Goa on a transit remand was produced before a local judge and passed on a 6-day police custody.

Gupta named among the partners in Being GS hospitality goa arpora LLP came out and informed the reporters outside the court that he had nothing to do with the club activities. “I am a sleeping partner. I do not participate in the operations in any way, Gupta said. A sleeping partner or silent partner is an investor who does not take an active part in the activity of a company.

His attorney, Adv Rohan Dessai, claimed that his client was cooperative with the investigation.

Ajay Gupta is alleged to have been in Goa during the incident but he flew to Delhi on the next morning and was admitted to a hospital. Gupta became a arrested person when he was released out of the hospital.

Sawant also claimed that the police were closing the ranks on panchayat secretary Raghuvir Bagkar who had not reported to the interrogations despite being summoned over the last two days, and sarpanch Roshan Redkar who had given the establishment a trade licence in 2023.

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Both Bagkar and Redkar have applied to a local court in Goa to be allowed to have anticipatory bail.

The state government has also unleashed an attack on the high-footfall venues and has closed three locations, one of them being a nightclub in Vagator.

Enforcement teams are already on the ground as at yesterday where all the clubs and high footfall restaurants, which include senior scale officers, fire safety officers, building safety officers and electricity engineers, are being visited. They have been provided with a checklist. Clubs which give noteworthy breaches - their declaration will be made in a few days, upon which we will disband their clubs too, Sawant also said.

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