New Delhi: The owners of Goa’s ‘Birch by Romeo Lane’ nightclub, where 25 people died in a fire, have no business presence, operational establishments, or commercial activities in Thailand that required them to travel there, the Goa Police told a Delhi court Thursday.
The proximity of the fire and their immediate departure from the country, instead, pointed to an attempt to evade the consequences of the incident, the Goa Police argued in court.
With this, the Goa Police opposed transit anticipatory bail applications of Delhi-based nightclub owners Saurabh and Gaurav Luthra. The brothers escaped to Thailand’s Phuket on an early-morning Indigo flight, only hours after the fire.
The nightclub fire killed 25 people late on the night of 6 December, including 20 employees of the nightclub and five tourists, including four from Delhi. The injured people are undergoing treatment at the government-run Goa Medical College and Hospital.
On Wednesday, ThePrint reported that the Luthras booked tickets to Thailand just over 90 minutes after the Goa Fire Department received a distress call from ‘Birch by Romeo Lane’. The nightclub was operating in the Arpora village of the North Goa district.
The Thai authorities detained the Luthras on the morning of 11 December in response to a Blue Corner notice issued against them by Interpol on the Central Bureau of Investigation’s inputs and deported them.
“The applicant alleges that he travelled to Thailand for business-related purposes. The applicant, his LLP, and their associated entities have no business presence, no operational establishments, and no commercial activities whatsoever in Thailand,” a Goa Police affidavit has informed the court, a source told ThePrint.
The Luthras paid Rs one lakh to book tickets on the MakeMyTrip platform, the source said, citing the affidavit. The police have obtained all the evidence from the travel agency and the airline.
“The proximity between the incident and the applicant’s immediate departure clearly establishes that the travel was undertaken with the intent to evade the consequences of the incident. The applicant’s conduct thus reveals a conscious attempt to flee and reflects mens rea to avoid investigation,” the source quoted the Goa Police as saying in the affidavit.
“The false premise of a business trip further reinforces that the travel was not bona fide but was undertaken to avoid the legal consequences arising from the incident. Assuming, without admitting, that the applicant had scheduled business meetings or potential site inspections, the applicant would necessarily have had to book tickets in advance,” the source said on the grounds of the police’s conclusions, as mentioned in the affidavit.
“The fact that the flight tickets were booked only after the incident and not beforehand renders his explanation wholly untenable.”
The Goa Police further informed the court that when investigators reached the brothers’ residence in Delhi on 8 December, their mother claimed total unawareness of their whereabouts. Their lawyers have repeated the same in court.
The police submitted that the investigation to date had established that the owner became aware of the fire immediately, so it was their “moral and legal responsibility” to travel to the coastal state.
They could have cooperated with the authorities and assisted the victims and their families, according to the police. “Instead, the applicant chose to leave the country at the earliest possible opportunity.”
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)