MEA Considering Goa's Request to Revoke Passports of Duo Running Fire-Hit Nightclub
New Delhi: The external affairs ministry received and is considering the Goa government's request to revoke the passports of brothers Saurabh and Gaurav Luthra, the reported owners of a nightclub in the state that was hit by a deadly fire over the weekend, official sources said on Wednesday (December 10).
The ministry is examining the request under the Passports Act in line with existing rules, the sources said.
A fire that broke out at the Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub in Goa's Arpora in the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday killed 25 people, most of them workers at the establishment.
According to news reports, the FIR in the case, which invokes provisions pertaining to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, acts endangering lives or personal safety and negligent conduct with respect to fire or combustible substances, attributed the blaze to a “fire show” at the club that was held “without providing fire safety equipment”.
Police said earlier this week that the Luthra brothers had travelled to Phuket, Thailand shortly after the fire. The duo was not at their address in Delhi when officers went there to carry out a raid, according to a statement quoted in the press.
Subsequently the Goa police said it obtained an Interpol blue corner notice against the Luthras.
A Delhi court on Wednesday denied interim protection from arrest to the brothers, who argued that they had not fled to Thailand but gone there as part of a business meeting, as well as that they are not owners but licensees of the nightclub, PTI reported.
Meanwhile the police, which had reportedly arrested five Birch by Romeo Lane employees, picked up Ajay Gupta, who was identified in media reports as another owner of the club, from Delhi on Wednesday after obtaining a transit warrant.
The authorities also demolished a shack owned by the Luthra brothers in Goa on Tuesday, PTI reported.
Local authorities had traded blame for Birch by Romeo Lane's operations after the fire, with some others alleging while speaking to the media that the establishment was illegally built on a salt pan-fish farm.
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