New Delhi: Owners among 13 named in Goa club fire charge sheet
PANAJI: The Goa police on Thursday filed a charge sheet, naming 13 accused, including co-owners Gaurav Luthra and Saurabh Luthra, in connection with the fire at Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub that claimed 25 lives in December last year.
The police filed the 4,150-page charge sheet, which lists 305 witnesses, before the Mapusa judicial magistrate.
Twenty-five people, including four from a Delhi family, were killed and several others injured as a devastating fire engulfed the Birch By Romeo Lane nightclub, a popular venue for party at Arpora village in North Goa, on the night of December 6, 2025. Luthra brothers, the co-owners of the nightclub, had fled to Phuket in Thailand hours after the incident and were deported from that nation on December 17.
Besides the Luthra brothers, their partner at the M/s Being GS Hospitality Goa Arpora LLP, which owned the Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub, Ajay Gupta, was also named in the charge sheet. All three are currently in judicial custody. The charge sheet has also names the nightclub’s employees, Rajiv Modak (corporate, general manager), Vivek Singh (general manager) and Bijay Kumar Singh (operations manager), as accused. They are also in judicial custody.
Roshan Redkar, then sarpanch of Arpora-Nagoa panchayat, and Raghuvir Bagkar, then secretary of the panchayat, both currently in judicial custody, and Priyanshu Thakur (nightclub gate manager) and Rajveer Singhania (bar manager), who are out on bail, have also been named in the charge sheet. The Anjuna police have also named Mayur Kolwalkar and Mohammad Afif Abdulsab Bateri, officials of an event management company which had organised a show at the club on the day of the incident, in the charge sheet.
British national Surinder Kumar Khosla, who is currently on the run, has also been named as an accused. A blue corner notice has been issued against him, police said.
The police have charged the accused under sections 105 (culpable homicide), 125 (endangering human life) and 287 (negligent handling of fire and combustible material endangering human life) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). Subsequently the sections 336 (forgery), 338 (using a forged document as genuine), 340(2) and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy), 238 (destruction of evidence), 241 (destruction of documents), and 3(7) (acts of omission) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) were added to the case.
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