Goa nightclub fire: Luthra brothers held in Thailand, deportation process underway

Goa night club fire: Police investigation had revealed that the brothers booked flight tickets to Thailand even as emergency teams were battling the blaze.

Updated on: Dec 11, 2025, 11:17:52 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The two brothers linked to the Goa nightclub fire that killed 25 people are believed to have been detained in Thailand, people familiar with the matter said, adding that the process to deport them to India to face trial has been initiated.

Saurabh Luthra (R) has been identified as the person who ran the nightclub in Goa where the deadly midnight fire broke out post midnight on Sunday. (AP and LinkedIn/saurabh-luthra)

The external affairs ministry (MEA) is examining a request from the Goa government to revoke the passports of Gaurav Luthra and Saurabh Luthra, co-owners of the Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub in North Goa. The brothers left India shortly after the December 6 blaze in Arpora, for which an Interpol Blue Corner notice has already been issued at the behest of the CBI.

Goa Police investigation revealed that the brothers booked flight tickets to Thailand even as emergency teams were battling the blaze.

According to officials, Gaurav and Saurabh booked their tickets on MakeMyTrip at 1:17 am on December 7, a time when firefighters and police were struggling to douse the flames and rescue those trapped inside the Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub in Arpora. “Even as the Goa Police and Goa Fire Services were battling to douse the fire and rescue the people trapped inside, the Luthra brothers were preparing to flee the country,” an official said.

Earlier on Wednesday, a New Delhi court declined to grant interim protection from arrest to the brothers. Their lawyers argued that the Luthras had not fled the country but were on a business trip, and maintained that they were licensees - not owners - of the nightclub. They further contended that day-to-day operations were managed by the club’s staff, absolving the brothers of direct responsibility.

Meanwhile, Goa Police have arrested five managers and staff members in connection with the fire, which broke out around midnight and quickly engulfed the venue, located about 25 km from Panaji. Authorities in India are now coordinating with their counterparts in Thailand as the deportation process moves forward.

Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant said the inquiry report into the tragedy will be ready within eight days, as the state begins disbursing compensation to victims’ families and tightens safety audits across entertainment venues.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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