Built on salt pan, ran without licence: Govt-led probe exposes violations at Goa nightclub

A new government inquiry has pulled back the curtain on how the
tragic fire at Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub, which killed 25 people in early December, happened in a place that shouldn’t have been there at all, legally or structurally.

The magisterial probe’s report, made public this week, paints a worrying picture of how the popular Arpora village club was constructed right in the middle of a salt pan, land where building anything is “not permissible under any law in force either now or earlier.”

Officials say the venue carried on operating for months after its trade licence lapsed on March 31, 2024, and no one in local bodies acted to stop it.

“The premises continued to run illegally without a valid trade licence and no action was taken by the Village Panchayat to seal the property,” the report states.

Collusion and compliance failures

It wasn’t just the location that was illegal. The inquiry found significant procedural mistakes from irregular entries in the initial application for the permit to missing mandatory documents like land records and approved plans, yet the licence was signed off in a matter of days.

Perhaps more troublingly, local officials admitted they didn’t even alert other departments to the licence’s expiry, even though those departments depended on it before granting permissions.

“Therefore, it establishes their collusion with the owners of this property in keeping the restaurant running illegally,” the report read, pointing to violations of official conduct rules.

When safety is ignored, consequnces are fatal

The probe also stated the repeated public complaints over noise and parking that were brushed aside, and most critically, glaring safety omissions.

It noted that
fireworks were set off inside the club “without taking proper care and caution” and without adequate fire-fighting equipment. All these factors were linked to how the blaze spread so quickly and made evacualtion of the kitchen staff nearly impossible.