'They assaulted us, asked what's your status': Before deadly fire, woman narrates horror at Luthra brothers' 'Romeo Lane'

GOA: Authorities in Goa are revisiting safety concerns at Romeo Lane, a Vagator nightclub linked to the Luthra brothers, after a tourist’s months-old account of the venue’s unsafe layout resurfaced.

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Vaibhavi, who visited the club in November, described the nightclub as “suffocating” due to its single elevated entry and exit.




She said that staff behaved rudely and that security personnel had physically assaulted her group during the visit.

"I visited Romeo Lane in Vagator on 1st November 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," she said.



"My cousin shifted it aside with his foot. The manager came to us and said, 'You are damaging the furniture; we should have thrown you out earlier. You don't have the status to be here.' He grabbed my cousin's collar and started speaking to us rudely. 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," she added further.

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"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. When I pushed the bouncer to stop him, he hit me too. They were using such bad language towards us that I had never heard before. 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," Vaibhavi told news agency ANI.

Somehow, an FIR was filed after a lot of effort. I had included the names of both owners in my complaint, but the Police later removed them, saying they were not physically present when this incident occurred, so they are not at fault. f you don't take women's safety and tourist safety seriously, such incidents will keep happening in Goa," she added further.

Saurabh and Gaurav Luthra, co-owners of the fire-ravaged Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub, were recently picked up by Thai police from Hotel Indigo in Patong, Phuket, days after fleeing India on an IndiGo flight as 25 people died in a blaze at their club.

The brothers became 'persona non grata' in Thailand after their passports were suspended by the regional passport office in Delhi. Their travel documents were declared invalid after they failed to respond to a notice seeking reasons why action should not be taken against them, easing the execution of India’s request for their detention, officials said.

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