Mumbai: A woman from Mumbai has now alleged that she and her family members faced severe harassment at a beach shack owned by Saurabh and Gaurav Luthra in Goa earlier this year, following which they registered an FIR against the staff.
The Luthra brothers are co-owners of the Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub where a fire erupted in the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday, killing 25 people. They have been detained in Thailand now and are likely to be extradited to India shortly. A Delhi court turned down their anticipatory bail plea on Thursday.
The establishment the woman mentioned is another address owned by the brothers in Vagator, Goa, known simply as Romeo Lane. This joint has been demolished by authorities after the nightclub fire after it came to light that it was operating on government land without permission.
The woman, identified as Vaibhav Chandel, told ANI that the club’s staff spoke rudely, behaved inappropriately, and hit them with rods. She also described the club as “suffocating”, saying that it had only one entry and exit.
“I visited Romeo Lane in Vagator on November 1 with my cousins. We were 13 people in total. The club is built in such a way that it is very suffocating. It has only one entry and one exit, and that too at a height. So it is tough to enter and exit from that club. The staff spoke to us rudely and behaved inappropriately. When we were leaving the club around 3 am, a heavy chair was in our way. My cousin shifted it aside with his foot,” Vaibhav recalled.
She alleged that the staff reacted in a strange manner, with the club’s manager telling them: ‘You are damaging the furniture; we should have thrown you out earlier. You don’t have the status to be here’. He then grabbed her cousin’s collar, she claimed.
“When we tried to apologise and leave, he called all the security personnel, the bouncers. They started chasing us and raised their hands at us. Since it was tough to leave that club, they chased us down and hit people in groups. They hit my sister on the chest, pushed her so badly that she fell down the stairs. They put up a barricade at the entry gate so we couldn’t leave. When my brother removed it, a bouncer ran towards him with a rod and started hitting him badly,” Vaibhav said.
According to the FIR, when Vaibhav tried to save her brother, the staff slapped her and tried to pull her t-shirt. The staff members kept using abusive language towards them, she said.
“Since everyone was badly hurt, we decided to go to the police station in the morning and not right away. I informed the police, and they told us to come to the Anjuna police Station the next day. Somehow, an FIR was filed after a lot of effort,” Vaibhav said.
A case was registered against the club’s manager, Ajay Kavitkar, another staff member, Junaid Ali, and the security staff.
The woman had also included the names of Luthra brothers, but the police removed them, saying they were not at fault as they were not physically present at the time of the incident, she said, as reported by NDTV.
“If you don’t take women’s safety and tourist safety seriously, such incidents will keep happening in Goa,” Chandel added.
