Goa club inferno
PANAJI: Grief curdled into rage outside the morgue of Goa Medical College and Hospital on Sunday as relatives and friends of the 25 victims in the Arpora nightclub blaze, most of them migrant staffers, squatted in the harsh afternoon sun and demanded to know: Where are the owners?Nobody from the management of Birch By Romeo Lane nightclub was there as the acrid smell of formaldehyde drifted through the morgue’s entrance, mingling with the despair of the families and friends of those killed in the inferno.Some had rushed to the hospital after working through the night at other party spots in town, most of which employ people from some of the remoter parts of the country, including Jharkhand and the North-East. “We want to talk to the owners. Why else would we sit here?” said a friend of Vivek Chhetri, one of the victims.A young man works at a club in Vagator run by the Luthra brothers, owners of Birch By Romeo Lane, and wouldn’t give his name for fear of losing his job. “Those who knew of the fire ran away, but they did not inform our boys who were down in the basement kitchen. They ran and saved themselves, leaving the boys behind,” he said.Many of those who had come to identify the dead carried pictures shared with them over WhatsApp by the victims’ families. Some were brothers, nephews, cousins or neighbours.Jharkhand native Narayan Mahto, who works at Agacaim, was there to identify two brothers – 18 and 22. “They were my nephews,” he said. “A third boy from my state died in the fire. They followed me here to find work barely 6 months ago,” he said.Uncertainty over how they would send the bodies home after identification weighed on the minds of anguished faces huddling to discuss what to do next. “Either the owners or state govt needs to look into this. How do I arrange to have a body sent from here to my country?” said Padam, a young man from Nepal working in Goa. He was there to identify the body of a victim he had never met. “I came here at 8am after receiving a call from a family friend related to the deceased. The authorities should have been around to help us,” said Padam.
